Tech titans team up to form optical interconnect alliance to solve the AI buildout's big data bottleneck — Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom & more set sights on building PHY to break through the limitations of copper

Tech giants like Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Microsoft, and others have formed the Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement (OCI MSA) group to develop an open connectivity specification for optical interconnections in AI data centers. The goal is to overcome the limitations of copper by enabling higher data transfer speeds and reducing power consumption through optical interconnections. The group aims to create a physical layer (PHY) capable of delivering speeds up to 3.2Tb/s to support large-scale AI workloads. The standardization of optical interconnects would allow for multi-vendor supply chains and alleviate supply chain constraints faced by copper. The alliance seeks to establish a platform-agnostic approach to optical interconnections to drive innovation in AI data center infrastructure.