OCP 2026: Optics Takes Center Stage in Enabling the Next Wave of AI Networking and High-Speed Switching
Dell'Oro Group, Monday, October 19th, 2026
Dell'Oro: optics sessions nearly doubled at OCP 2026 as co-packaged optics entered production and 102.4 Tbps switching took shape.
Dell'Oro's analyst says optics dominated OCP 2026, with sessions nearly doubling as AI networks demand more bandwidth and density.
Co-packaged optics hit a milestone as NVIDIA's Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics switches entered production, and Celestica showed a liquid-cooled 102.4 Tbps CPO switch on Broadcom's Tomahawk 6, part of a 102.4 Tbps generation forming across vendors.
Arista cited near-packaged optics as a path to 6.5 Pb/s per rack, while NVIDIA and Cisco proposed a 400 Gb/s-per-lane USFP pluggable.
The analyst stresses that early commercialization is not broad adoption, and that yields, serviceability and shipment volumes are the metrics to watch.