TrendForce: CPO production bottleneck shifts to test integration
A new TrendForce study of AI interconnect technology says that as AI data centers drive demand for high-speed links, co-packaged optics (CPO) is moving toward mass production and the bottleneck is shifting from precise alignment to fast testing: optical alignment has been cut to seconds or sub-seconds, but a full test of a single PIC can still exceed 100 seconds. CPO testing requires laser sources, optical switches, power meters and spectrum analyzers from scattered suppliers, which complicates cross-equipment control, calibration and test flows, while fitting every test station with a full instrument set leaves expensive tools idle and raises cost. TrendForce therefore frames unified software that coordinates electrical and optical measurement, plus optical path switching and multi-station sharing, as the key to lower cost and higher throughput. It expects 2027 to be the year when CPO test architectures and equipment investment directions converge, with 2028 as the validation period for large-scale production, and notes positioning by Teradyne, Advantest and several Taiwanese and Chinese suppliers.
Without test integration and shared instrumentation, CPO cost and throughput may not support AI data center interconnect demand.