Technology
Optical Scale-up Consortium Established to Create an Open Specification for AI Infrastructure Led by Founding Members AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 12, 2026--OCI MSA Consortium Established to Create Open Spec for AI Infrastructure Led by Founding Members AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI
About this update from Advanced Micro Devices Inc
[{"type":"text","content":"SAN JOSE, Calif., March 12, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group today announced its formation, led by founding members AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI. This industry consortium marks a pivotal shift toward a hyperscaler-driven open ecosystem to enable the development of a multi-vendor supply chain for optical scale-up interconnects. By aligning on an open specification, the OCI MSA members are promoting a robust optical ecosystem which will ensure that the future of AI interconnects is built with a flexible, multi-vendor foundation to meet the optical interconnect needs of modern AI infrastructure.","length":684,"tagName":"p"},{"type":"text","content":"The Physics and Power Mandate","length":29,"tagName":"p"},{"type":"text","content":"As large language models (LLMs) advance toward super intelligence, traditional copper-based connectivity is reaching limitations in physical reach which are impacting AI cluster scale-up domain architectures. OCI will enable migration from copper-based to optical-based scale-up architectures, alleviating copper interconnect bottlenecks.","length":338,"tagName":"p"},{"type":"text","content":"The OCI specification, which is available at www.oci-msa.org, is architected to be power, latency and cost optimized. It combines non-return to zero (NRZ) modulation and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical technology and shifts the connectivity paradigm from a module-centric to a silicon-centric model. By enabling tighter integration of optics with compute and networking silicon, OCI unlocks meaningful gains in bandwidth density and system scalability while meeting the aggressive power targets of legacy copper-based connectivity.","length":546,"tagName":"p"},{"type":"text","content":"State-of-the-Art Compute Meets State-of-the-Art Optics","length":54,"tagName":"p"},{"type":"text","content":"By establishing an interoperable optical interface protocol, the OCI MSA enables a "plug-and-play" ecosystem. The open and interoperable specification enables hyperscalers to disaggregate any top-tier processor unit (XPU) engines and top-tier scale-up switches through a common optical physical layer (PHY), ensuring that best-in-class compute meets state-of-the-art optics.","length":384,"tagName":"p"},{"type":"text","content":"A...