Huawei, Baidu and other industry partners have launched China’s first multi-source agreement (MSA) for near-packaged optics (NPO), aiming to establish an open and unified technical standard framework for next-generation high-speed optical interconnects and accelerate ecosystem collaboration.
According to Huawei Computing’s official WeChat account, the Supernode and GW-level AIDC Technology Forum, along with the Open AI Infra Community’s semiannual meeting, was held in Beijing on July 9 under the guidance of the Global Computing Consortium and hosted by the Open AI Infra Community.
During the event, Huawei, together with industry partners including China Mobile Research Institute, JD Cloud, Baidu, China Electronics Standardization Institute, ZTE Software, H3C, Accelink, Ligent, HGTech, Lightelligence, Hero Power, Yamaichi, Hirose, Molex, Luxshare Technology, Qinghong Electronics, Aluksen (Optoelectronics Research Institute of Westlake University), iNano and Joywell Semi, jointly launched the OPEN NPO project and initiated China’s first NPO optical interconnect MSA (Multi-Source Agreement).
The initiative is designed to develop an open and standardized technology ecosystem, accelerating innovation and industrial cooperation around next-generation high-speed optical interconnect technologies.
NPO, short for Near-Packaged Optics, is an optical interconnect architecture that moves the optical engine from the traditional pluggable position on the front panel of a switch closer to the switching or computing chip on the PCB. However, unlike fully integrated solutions, the optical engine and chip remain separate packages and are connected through short-distance, high-speed electrical traces.
Positioned between conventional pluggable optical modules and fully integrated co-packaged optics (CPO), NPO reduces electrical transmission distances and power consumption while maintaining advantages such as modularity, repairability and flexibility for multi-vendor sourcing.
According to TrendForce, as demand for AI training and inference continues to surge, NPO is emerging as a near- to mid-term transition solution favored by many cloud service providers (CSPs).
Alibaba and Tencent have already identified NPO as a key technology direction for the coming years and are promoting related open standards through the Open Data Center Committee (ODCC). Meta and Microsoft are also prioritizing NPO deployments, advancing an open optical interconnect ecosystem through the OCI-MSA (Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement). Amazon, meanwhile, is adopting a multi-supplier strategy and has partnered with STMicroelectronics to develop NPO solutions.
Huawei said the first domestic NPO optical interconnect MSA project will drive innovation in critical high-speed optical interconnect technologies, establish an open and collaborative standardization mechanism, accelerate large-scale commercialization of NPO technology, and help build an independent and open high-speed optical interconnect ecosystem in China.
Under the project roadmap, the OPEN NPO project plans to release its first technical specification in the third quarter of 2026, while completing product adaptation and full-scenario testing for NPO solutions and electrical connectors.
By the first half of 2027, the project aims to further improve collaboration mechanisms and expand the industry ecosystem, paving the way for large-scale commercial adoption of NPO technology.
As the development of large AI models, supernodes and hyperscale intelligent computing clusters accelerates, high-bandwidth, low-latency and low-power interconnect networks are becoming critical infrastructure for unlocking AI computing capacity. The launch of China’s first NPO optical interconnect MSA is expected to accelerate the country’s push toward greater autonomy in advanced computing infrastructure.
(Photo credit: Huawei)omy in advanced computing infrastructure.
(Photo credit: Huawei)
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