As the AI industry grows explosively, the competitiveness of data centers is reaching a new turning point. In the past, the performance of computing devices such as GPUs was the core competitive advantage, but now, the ability to efficiently connect hundreds of thousands of GPUs and deliver data is emerging as a more critical challenge. The technology at the center of these changes is Co-Packaged Optics (CPO).

e4ds news will host a webinar on July 21 at the e4ds EEWebinar on the topic of 'Why CPO Now? The Future of Data Center Optical Interconnects'.

Advisor Lim Seung-chan, who will be leading the presentation at this webinar, is scheduled to introduce the technical limitations facing data centers in the AI era and the future direction of next-generation optical interconnect technology.

According to the announcement, AI data centers are expected to evolve into a massive cluster structure connecting hundreds of thousands to up to 1 million GPUs.

In this process, the existing bottleneck is shifting from computational performance to data movement.

Although numerous GPUs need to exchange data in real time, the copper-based interconnects currently in mainstream use are revealing limitations such as heat generation, power consumption, signal loss, and space constraints.

Advisor Im Seung-chan is scheduled to explain in this webinar that CPO is a key technology for solving these problems.

CPO is a technology designed to integrate a switch ASIC and an optical engine into a single package, minimizing the distance electrical signals travel and processing optical signals at a closer location.

This reduces power consumption and latency in data centers and enables the construction of ultra-high-speed networks.

The webinar explains the evolution of current data center networks from Pluggable Optics to On-Board Optics, through Non-Proximity Optics (NPO), and finally to CPO.

Also, core technologies required for CPO implementation, such as silicon photonics (PIC), optical transceivers, interposers, glass substrates, and optical circuit switches (OCS).We also plan to cover this.

In particular, the Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) is introduced as a technology that directly connects optical paths without photoelectric conversion.

The presentation plans to explain that OCS is garnering attention as a next-generation data center technology capable of significantly reducing latency and power consumption, and that it has the potential to be utilized primarily in Spine layer networks in the future.

The market outlook is also attracting attention.

The presentation data predicts that the global CPO market will grow from approximately 70 billion won in 2024 to approximately 12 trillion won in 2030.

Analysis suggests that as investment in AI infrastructure expands, optical interconnect technology is emerging as a new growth axis in the semiconductor, network equipment, and optical communication sectors.

This webinar is an opportunity to understand the future structure of AI data centers and to examine why global companies such as NVIDIA, Broadcom, Marvell, Intel, and AMD are focusing on securing CPO technology.

This event is considered noteworthy for industry professionals in the semiconductor, telecommunications, and data center sectors who are interested in core infrastructure for the AI era and trends in next-generation optical interconnect technology.

You can participate in the webinar by clicking the eeWebinar page or the Register for Webinar button on the right.