At the GTC 2026 conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explicitly corrected the market misconception of "optics replacing copper," stating that copper cables remain indispensable inside AI server racks due to their physical advantages like zero power consumption and low. At the GTC 2026 conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explicitly corrected the market misconception of "optics replacing copper," stating that copper cables remain indispensable inside AI server racks due to their physical advantages like zero power consumption and low. To keep ahead of what customers need, Marvell continually seeks to boost capacity, speed, and performance of the digital signal processors (DSPs), transimpedance amplifiers or TIAs, drivers, firmware and other components inside interconnects. It's an interdisciplinary endeavor involving expertise. Although co-packaged optics (CPO) and on-board optics (OBO) have been proposed to increase bandwidth density, these approaches introduce significant challenges in field serviceability, scalability, and manufacturability, making them difficult to deploy widely in hyperscale environments. To. Held March 17–19 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the show brought together the global optical communications ecosystem at a critical inflection point: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping how data centers are built and the race to scale is pushing interconnect technology to. Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) integrates the optical engine directly alongside the processor, reducing the electrical signal propagation losses. By optimizing the whole link, a CPO approach can drastically lower the overall energy consumption and latency by reducing or even removing the electrical DSP. The Bernstein report points out that copper and optical solutions in AI data centers are not mutually exclusive but will coexist in the long term across two major scenarios: Scale-up and Scale-out.
