OIF Validates AI-Era Interoperability Live at ECOC 2026 Through Multi-Vendor Demonstrations and Expert Sessions

Interoperability demonstrations will feature 39 OIF member companies, while three expert Market Focus presentations will highlight the organization’s latest technical work

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OIF will bring together 39 of its member companies at the ECOC 2026 Exhibition, September 21–23 in Malaga, Spain, to showcase the interoperable building blocks required to scale AI-era networks.

Through live, multi-vendor demonstrations at booth #2126, OIF members will show how industry collaboration translates specifications into working implementations across optical systems, high-speed electrical interfaces, module management, co-packaging and energy-efficient architectures.

The interoperability showcase serves as a proving ground for technologies moving from development toward deployment, helping operators and system builders reduce integration risk, preserve sourcing flexibility and accelerate adoption.

Alongside the showcase, OIF leadership and member experts will present three ECOC Market Focus sessions on September 23, exploring 448Gbps signaling for AI, optical interconnect standards developed on the AI timeline, and Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS)-based management for coherent pluggables.

“AI infrastructure is advancing on an accelerated timeline, and the industry cannot afford to trade speed for interoperability,” said Nathan Tracy, OIF President (TE Connectivity). “At ECOC, our members will show how collaboration turns complex specifications into multi-vendor solutions spanning optics, electrical interfaces, management and energy efficiency. Together, the demonstrations and Market Focus sessions will highlight the work our members are doing together to develop and advance interoperable solutions that can keep pace with AI’s rapidly evolving requirements.”

Technology Areas Featured in OIF’s ECOC 2026 Interoperability Showcase

Optical System — DCI /Scale-Across/ IP over DWDM Ecosystem

OIF’s Optical System demonstration will showcase a variety of 100G, 400G and 800G module applications, featuring our own 400ZR and 800ZR implementations. Additional coherent optics applications cover both single-span and multi-span scenarios, including 100GBase-ZR and 400G/800G OpenROADM (C+L bands). The showcase also highlights use cases for 500 m and 50 km Multi-Core Fiber, optical switching, and integration with IP and optical controllers. With 22 vendors participating, this showcase demonstrates how open, multi-vendor optical systems can enhance capacity, operational flexibility and scalability in today’s networks while looking forward to tomorrow's networks.

Common Electrical I/O (CEI) — Electrical Building Blocks for Future-Oriented Data Centers

OIF will showcase the application spaces, technical challenges and potential solution paths for electrical interfaces operating at 448Gbps per lane along with form factor innovations on 224G electrical architectures, driving increased bandwidth density for AI applications. CEI demonstrations align semiconductor, interconnect and test and measurement companies towards essential interoperable frameworks for the AI era. A live, multi-vendor 448G demonstration will focus on hyperscaler needs to scale AI networks beyond 1m of passive connectivity, while a further expanded CEI-224G showcase brings greater ecosystem participation and highlights diverse link types from Very Short Reach (VSR) to Long Reach (LR) and Linear.

In collaboration with OIF’s Physical & Link Layer (PLL) Working Group Energy Efficient Interfaces (EEI) track, OIF will also demonstrate energy-efficient electro-optical innovation across retimed, half-retimed (RTLR) and unretimed (Linear) pluggable optics and silicon. These demonstrations highlight the strength of the CEI ecosystem, proving robust interoperability across vendors and link types while advancing scalable, high-performance connectivity at 224G and the burgeoning 448G.

Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) — Revolutionizing Management

OIF members will demonstrate how CMIS provides a common management solution spanning copper and coherent modules, simplifies bring-up between hosts and modules, and supports both standard and custom media interfaces. Live demonstrations will include:

• Enhanced firmware update capabilities designed to enable multi-vendor firmware updates at scale for large AI datacenters
• CMIS management of External Laser Small Form-Factor Pluggable (ELSFP) modules for co-packaged optical solutions
• CMIS enabled link training (CMIS-LT and CMIS-APSU) for bring-up and performance tuning of 224G and beyond electrical and optical links
• Enhanced advertising capabilities including application dependent power reporting and extended application and interface descriptors.

Together, these demonstrations highlight how CMIS is evolving to address the increasingly diverse, high-speed and scalable management requirements of next-generation AI and data center networks.

Energy Efficient Interfaces (EEI) and Co-Packaging — Scaling Bandwidth Within Power Constraints

OIF members will present live and conceptual demonstrations of next-generation EEI and co-packaging solutions for AI compute. Featured work will include the Compute Optics Interface (COI); Retimed Transmitter, Linear Receiver interfaces at 224G and 112G (RTLR-224G and RTLR-112G); External Laser Sources through ELSFP; high-density interfaces, including High-Density Connector (HDC) and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) approaches; and 12.8Tb/s Near-Package Optics (NPO). Addressing energy efficiency is one of the highest-priority challenges faced by hyperscalers as they grow their AI resources to the next generation.

These demonstrations reflect OIF’s work to improve bandwidth density and reduce power per bit as AI systems grow, bringing the ecosystem together around practical interfaces for compute optics, external laser sources, linear and half-retimed architectures and next-generation packaging.

Participating Members

The interoperability showcase includes 1Finity, Adtran, Amphenol Communications Solutions, AOI, Arycs Technologies, Astera Labs, Cadence Design Systems, Inc., CICT/Accelink, Ciena, Cisco, Coherent Corp., ColorChip, Corning Incorporated, EXFO, Fast Photonics, Furukawa Electric, Genuine Optics, H3C, HPE, Keysight Technologies, Ligent, Inc., Lightmatter, Marvell, Molex, MultiLane, MultiLane Test Products, Nokia, O-Net, Qualcomm, Samtec, Silith, Sumitomo Electric Industries, TE Connectivity, TeraHop PTE Limited, TeraSignal, US Conec, VeEX Inc., Wilder Technologies and Xscape Photonics.

OIF Brings AI-Era Interoperability Insights to ECOC 2026 Market Focus

ECOC’s Market Focus program brings together industry experts to share perspectives on the technologies and trends shaping optical communications. Through three presentations in this year’s program, OIF experts will highlight the critical work being done to advance the key technologies supporting the future of AI-era networks.

Driving a 448Gbps Signaling Spec for AI
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Time: 10:40–10:55 a.m. CEST
Presenter: Nathan Tracy, OIF President (TE Connectivity)

Developing AI Optical Interconnect Standards on the AI Timeline
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Time: 11–11:15 a.m. CEST
Presenter: Jeff Hutchins, OIF Physical & Link Layer Working Group EEI Vice Chair (Ranovus)

Decoding OIF CMIS to Simplify Network Management for Coherent Pluggables
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Time: 11:20–11:35 a.m. CEST
Presenter: Gary Nicholl, OIF Physical & Link Layer Working Group Management Co-Vice Chair (Cisco)

Visit OIF at ECOC 2026

Visit OIF at booth #2126 during the ECOC 2026 Exhibition, September 21–23 at FYCMA in Malaga, Spain, to see interoperability in action. Learn more at https://www.oiforum.com/meetings-events/oif-ecoc-2026/.

About OIF

OIF is where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done. With more than 25 years of effecting forward change in the industry, OIF represents the dynamic ecosystem of 180+ industry leading network operators, system vendors, component vendors and test equipment vendors collaborating to develop interoperable electrical, optical and control solutions that directly impact the industry’s ecosystem and facilitate global connectivity in the open network world. Connect with OIF on LinkedIn, on X, on Bluesky and at https://www.oiforum.com/.