Advanced Photonics Coalition releases standards to unlock high-volume optical manufacturing

A standards push for photonics at scale

The Advanced Photonics Coalition (APC) has published a portfolio of standards intended to make optical networking components manufacturable at high volume. As The Next Platform reports, the announcement came at the PECC Summit and targets the manufacturing, interface and test practices that currently fragment the photonics supply chain.

The timing reflects mounting pressure. As AI clusters push data rates higher, copper interconnects reach ever-shorter distances while drawing more power and generating more heat — the phenomenon the industry calls the copper wall. Datacenter operators see optical networking, and co-packaged optics (CPO) in particular, as the way to feed bandwidth-hungry GPUs more efficiently.

A tightening supply chain

The backdrop is scarcity. Earlier this month, Lumentum Holdings told Bloomberg — as reported by The Next Platform — that its optical components are "completely sold out" through 2029, and that it cannot meet demand for some products before 2028. Lumentum makes indium phosphide components that are critical to photonics, and China is a major producer of indium phosphide, adding a geopolitical wrinkle to the supply chain. Nvidia, which backs Lumentum, demonstrated its Spectrum-X co-packaged optics technology at GTC the same week, with CEO Jensen Huang describing data flowing directly onto the chip and into the optics without passing through a PCB.

The Next Platform notes the fear that optical components could be heading toward the same shortages and price surges already afflicting high-end DRAM and flash storage.

What the standards cover

The APC portfolio spans five documents: a system-level architecture overview for co-packaged optics; an informative outlook and recommended practices for CPO; recommended test practices for silicon photonics used in CPO; a specification for 4-core multicore fiber cable, connectors and fiber array units; and a silicon photonics manufacturing specification.

The coalition argues that establishing common manufacturing, interface and test practices will strip out implementation variations that add no market value and break down the supply chain silos that limit output. The portfolio is designed to enable multiple sourcing and broader supplier participation, building what the APC describes as an open, scalable photonics ecosystem.

Open ecosystems versus vertical integration

In its CPO outlook document, the APC warns that without open, ecosystem-driven standards, the natural pull is toward vertically integrated proprietary solutions — an outcome it says would fragment the market, increase customer lock-in risk, slow adoption and diminish the innovation opportunities around CPO's technical benefits.

That lines up with McKinsey's recent guidance, cited by The Next Platform, that operators should deploy optics-integrated switches for higher bandwidth density and lower power per bit, but also need open interconnects, because specialized architectures only earn their cost at volume.

The standards also address fast optical circuit switching. Rather than standardizing a particular implementation, the APC says the goal is to define the control-plane, optical-interface and behavioral framework that lets fast, transparent optical circuit switches operate as first-class components of an open AI scale-up fabric.

Fewer transceivers, less indium phosphide

Photonics developer Resolight, a member of the APC working group, reads the standards as validation of its nanosecond optical circuit switching approach. CEO Ofer Shapiro points out that today's slow optical circuit switches, used to reconfigure networks, are deployed alongside data switches that run roughly a thousand times faster. His company's native photon routing keeps payloads in the light domain and avoids repeated optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversions, which Resolight claims would sharply cut the number of transceivers needed in multi-rack AI scale-up networks.

"The easiest to source and the greenest transceiver is the one that you don't need," Shapiro told The Next Platform, adding that if indium phosphide supply is a concern, the sensible response is to need less of it rather than work out where to get more.

Why it matters

Networking is becoming the main brake on AI compute. Digital Realty CTO Chris Sharp told the BBC earlier this year that "we're at the end of copper," and McKinsey has flagged networking as an area requiring improvement as AI workloads shift toward inference. If optical components stay supply-constrained the way memory has, datacenter buildouts get slower and more expensive. Standards that let more suppliers produce interchangeable photonics parts offer a plausible path to widening the supply base before a shortage hardens — and to keeping the market open rather than locked inside a handful of vertically integrated vendors.