Six Tech Giants Collaborate on Optical Interconnection Standard with 3.2 Tb/s Target Speed

Recently, three chip giants AMD, Broadcom, and Nvidia, together with cloud computing and AI leaders Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI, jointly established the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group. The group aims to develop a common optical physical layer and unified components, replacing traditional copper cables with fiber optics to enhance data transmission efficiency.

The standard will support expansion connections within AI systems and between racks, with a final transmission speed of up to 3.2 Tb/s. Notably, the OCI specification uses a protocol-agnostic design, compatible with Nvidia's NVLink and AMD/Broadcom-led UALink protocols. Additionally, the group is led by end-user enterprises and uses the MSA model to quickly achieve interface consistency, skipping the complex processes of traditional standard organizations.