Alibaba Cloud's Chen Qin: NPO Is the Optimal Solution; Next Year's Optical Module Deployments to Exceed All Previous Years Combined

C114 News, September 16 — The 27th China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) was successfully held last week at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center.

At the concurrent "AI Compute Cluster Optical Interconnect Technology Development Forum," Alibaba Cloud optical network architect Chen Qin delivered a keynote presentation detailing the evolution of optical interconnect technology for AI intelligent computing centers. He laid out Alibaba Cloud's complete technology roadmap from 3.2T NPO to 6.4-12.8T UPO, proposed differentiated technical solutions for Scale-up and Scale-out scenarios, and provided a clear reference for the large-scale deployment of AI optical interconnects across the industry.

Chen Qin noted that AI compute clusters are expanding exponentially, driving explosive growth in optical module demand. The number of optical modules deployed by Alibaba Cloud doubles year over year, and next year's additions could exceed the cumulative total of all previous years. Global demand for 1.6T optical modules will also hit a record high. Against this backdrop, technology selection is no longer purely about peak performance; scalability, ease of deployment and delivery efficiency have become the core criteria, and complex technology paths that are difficult to deploy in volume will gradually be phased out by the market.

For the two core network scenarios in intelligent computing centers, Alibaba Cloud has established differentiated technology strategies. The Scale-out network covers long-distance interconnects across buildings and campuses, facing complex networking needs such as heterogeneous switch chips and multi-spec NIC access. Pluggable optical modules with DSP, with their open, decoupled and plug-and-play characteristics, remain the mainstream solution now and in the future, and will continue to iterate toward 1.6T and 3.2T.

Scale-up networks, by contrast, impose far stricter requirements on bandwidth, density, power consumption and latency, with bandwidth demand 9-10 times that of Scale-out networks, making linear-drive technology the optimal choice. Chen Qin divided linear-drive optical module technology into three paths: pluggable LPO/XPO, on-board variant NPO, and the OPEN CPO form approaching CPO signal integrity. By comparison, CPO offers the best signal integrity but is extremely difficult to deploy; traditional pluggable LPO has optical port uncertainty issues and cannot support deliveries at the scale of millions or tens of millions, while NPO balances performance, cost and scalability, making it the best deployment solution at the current stage for the 224G and even 448G era.

According to Chen Qin, NPO's core advantages include factory-bound equipment, deterministic optical port parameters and suitability for mass production, while reusing the existing supply chain and maintaining an open, decoupled ecosystem. Alibaba Cloud is already the world's first vendor to achieve NPO system-level R&D and large-scale deployment. Its in-house 3.2T NPO uses an LGA package to ensure excellent signal integrity, and combines four 25.6T domestic switch chips with internal shuffle networking to build a 100T QFabric switch, presented externally in a standardized 256×400G form factor. It requires no change to users' operations and maintenance practices, offers ample system performance headroom, and the next-generation version will deliver a two-order-of-magnitude performance improvement. The solution has now passed full-spectrum reliability testing, including drop, vibration and rigorous inquiry BR, validating the large-scale deployment capability of domestic 102.4T switches.

Chen Qin said that building on the mass production of existing 3.2T NPO, Alibaba Cloud continues to advance technology iteration and industry standardization. The 6.4T UPO ultra-high-performance optical engine standard v1.0, led by the company together with domestic internet companies including Tencent, has been officially released. The 6.4T UPO uses 2.5D/3D advanced packaging and HDI high-layer-count PCB processes, integrates built-in lasers, and can significantly reduce system complexity and fiber costs. It supports multiple scenarios including Scale-up, Scale-out and storage MPU, and has the potential to iterate to 48G rates. The 6.4T UPO module has entered the functional debugging stage and will make its official debut at the Apsara Conference at the end of September.