Latest optical engine may not be CPO, but it's still better than pluggables

Photonics startup Lightmatter says that its latest optical engine can cut the amount of fiber used by modern datacenters in half, and perhaps more importantly, it doesn't rely on co-packaging to do it.

Unveiled ahead of OFC on Wednesday, Lightmatter's Passage L20 is designed for use in high-performance scale-up switches and accelerators like GPUs. But rather than integrating the optics directly into the switch ASIC, as Nvidia or Broadcom have done with some of their latest switches, the L20 is optimized for near-package integration.

In this respect, the optical engine fits somewhere between a conventional pluggable module and the more sophisticated photonic interposers and co-packaged optics that Lightmatter is known for. 

"A lot of the hyperscalers are very interested in near-package optic (NPO) type solutions for the 2027 timeframe," CEO Nick Harris tells El Reg. "Some people — I don't know that they're right — are afraid of ...