Nvidia and SPIL plan 15x expansion of co-packaged optics capacity by mid-2027

Jensen Huang has a habit of making big predictions, and his latest one involves the pipes, not the chips. At Nvidia’s GTC Berlin event, the CEO said that optical networking in AI data centers could drive demand for optical components up by 15 times, a figure that reflects just how severely current interconnect technology is straining under the weight of modern AI workloads. The number is striking, but the logic behind it is straightforward. As AI models grow larger and data centers pack in more and more accelerators, the cables and connectors linking those chips together become a genuine bottleneck. Copper, which has handled that job for decades, is running into physical limits around power consumption, signal degradation, and bandwidth density. Optical interconnects, which use light instead of electrical signals, sidestep many of those constraints. The plan: 15x by mid-2027, 30x by end of 2028 Huang’s comments came alongside a concrete manufacturing roadmap. Nvidia, working with packaging partner Siliconware Precision Industries, plans to expand co-packaged optics optical-engine capacity by 15 times by mid-2027. That expansion is then expected to double again, reaching a total inc...