The Entire Optical Comms Sector Ignites!
NPO vs CPO showdown. Power savings, yield challenges, and 2027 volume forecasts.
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Weekend quarterly research from Japan’s Mizuho Securities directly raised the 2027 Spectrum-X volume ramp-up expectation to 80,000–100,000 units.
The market suddenly realized one thing: on the optical interconnect path, the industry may have chosen a direction completely different from before. This is not merely a replacement of technical terms—it is a roadmap-level correction.
What is DSP?
Before discussing NPO, we must thoroughly cover one thing: DSP, the Digital Signal Processor.
In a typical 800G pluggable optical module, total power consumption is about 14–17 watts. The DSP alone consumes 6–8 watts—nearly half.
Because the signal travels from the front panel to the ASIC (processor chip) and must pass through the PCB, connectors, and vias, the signal degrades at every stage. The DSP acts as the “photo retoucher,” continuously repairing the degraded signal along the way.
But if the optical engine is placed directly next to the ASIC, with the distance reduced to just a few millimeters, all those lossy stages disappear, and the DSP is no longer needed.
