APC Approves Standards Intended to Accelerate Photonics Manufacturing

The Advanced Photonics Coalition (APC) has approved a set of standards intended to support high-volume manufacturing of optical networking equipment.

The announcement was made at the PECC Summit amid concerns about shortages of components and materials used to manufacture optical networking systems. At the same time, growing demand from the artificial intelligence industry is pushing conventional copper interconnects toward their practical limits. As data rates increase, copper links become shorter, while heat output and energy consumption rise.

Photonics Industry Faces Scaling Challenges

The photonics industry is also struggling to expand production. Earlier this month, Lumentum Holdings told Bloomberg that its optical components were “completely sold out” through 2029. The company said it would be unable to meet demand for some products between now and 2028.

Lumentum manufactures indium phosphide components, which are important to photonics systems. China is a major producer of indium phosphide, adding geopolitical pressure to the supply chain.

Lumentum’s backers include Nvidia. At GTC Berlin this week, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang demonstrated the company’s Spectrum X technology based on co-packaged optics.

“So we now have extremely high data rate, extremely high quality data that comes directly onto the chip, and this goes directly into transceivers without going through a PCB and a transceiver goes right into the optics,” Huang said.

Data center operators are increasingly relying on optical technology to move more data to GPUs while improving efficiency. Optical systems require less power and generate less heat than comparable electrical interconnects.

Earlier this month, McKinsey identified networking as an area requiring improvement as AI workloads increasingly shift toward inference. The firm advised operators to deploy optics-integrated switches, also known as co-packaged optics (CPO), for greater bandwidth density and lower power consumption per bit. It also highlighted the need for open interconnects, noting that specialized architectures become cost-effective only at sufficient volume.

Statements such as Lumentum’s have raised concerns that optical networking components could face shortages and price increases similar to those affecting high-end DRAM and flash storage.

APC Standards Portfolio

The APC said its standards are intended to reduce manufacturing and supply-chain barriers:

“By establishing common manufacturing, interface, and test practices, APC aims to remove implementation variations that add no market value and overcome supply chain silos that constrain volume.”

According to the APC, the portfolio supports multiple sources and broader supplier participation, helping create an open and scalable photonics ecosystem.

The portfolio includes:

• System Level Architecture Overview for Co-Packaged Optics
• Co-Packaged Optics Informative Outlook and Recommended Practices
• Silicon Photonics for Co-Packaged Optics Recommended Test Practices
• 4-Core Multicore Fiber Cable, Connector and Fiber Array Unit Specification
• Silicon Photonics Manufacturing Specification

Resolight Supports Nanosecond Optical Switching

Photonics developer Resolight is a member of the APC working group. Its CEO, Ofer Shapiro, described two technologies that are currently deployed independently as networks scale:

“One is traditional slow switching OCS that they're using to reconfigure the network. And the other one is data switches that are working 1,000 times faster.”

Resolight views the APC standards as support for its nanosecond optical circuit switching approach. The company says the approach addresses the protocol integration required for native photon routing through nanosecond optical circuit switching (OCS).

“Native photon routing extends optical switching into the data plane itself, directing coordinated data transfers through the network while keeping their payloads in the light domain,” Resolight said.

By reducing repeated optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversions, the architecture could improve network energy efficiency and reduce the number of optical transceivers required in multi-rack AI scale-up networks.

Shapiro said the APC’s CPO specifications address the data-plane integration needed to make native photon routing an alternative to electronic data switching.

“The easiest to source and the greenest transceiver is the one that you don't need,” Shapiro said.

He added that if indium phosphide supplies become a concern, reducing the amount required would be more practical than finding additional sources.

Open Standards and CPO Adoption

In its Co-Packaged Optics Informative Outlook and Recommended Practices document, released this week, the APC warned that a lack of open, ecosystem-driven standards could encourage vertically integrated proprietary solutions:

“Without open ecosystem driven standards, the natural gravitational pull is toward vertically integrated proprietary solutions, an outcome that would fragment the market, increase customer lock-in risk, slow adoption, and ultimately diminish the opportunities of innovation for CPO’s technical benefits.”

Regarding nanosecond-level OCS, the APC said its goal was not to standardize one particular fast OCS implementation. Instead, it aims to define the control-plane, optical-interface, and behavioral framework needed for fast, transparent OCS to operate as a first-class component of an open AI scale-up fabric.

Earlier this year, Chris Sharp, chief technology officer at data center operator Digital Realty, told the BBC: “I think we're at the end of copper.” He said networking was increasingly becoming the main factor limiting compute performance.