Hyperscalers Establish Optical Compute Interconnect Standard
This week Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, AMD, Broadcom and Nvidia formed the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement group to define an open optical scale-up interconnect specification for AI clusters. The consortium will develop a protocol-agnostic common optical physical layer supporting UALink, NVLink and other protocols to replace copper short-reach links inside racks. The aim is to simplify integration, reduce development risk and accelerate deployment of optical scale-up hardware.
Key Points
- 1Create OCI MSA to define an open optical scale-up interconnect specification for AI cluster short‑reach links
- 2Enable protocol-agnostic common optical PHY so UALink, NVLink and other protocols share fiber infrastructure
- 3Reduce integration risk and shorten deployment cycles, allowing hyperscalers to scale accelerators with optics
Scoring Rationale
High industry impact and official vendor participation, but specification details and timelines remain publicly limited.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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