Probably the second biggest draw we saw at OCP Summit 2025, after the AMD Helios racks, was the Marvell co-packaged optics switches on display. Not only were these demo switches using co-packaged optics, but they were also designed to be liquid-cooled. Warning, these CPO switches just look exceedingly cool.
Marvell TX9190 Liquid-Cooled CPO Switch at OCP 2025
Here was the demo switch on the OCP Summit 2025 show floor. The switch was a collaboration with Jabil.
One of the neat things about CPO switches is that the footprint on the front of switches changes. Instead of just having a bunch of pluggable optics that each have light sources and then fiber connectors, in CPO switches we have a different setup.
We have pluggable light sources and then connectors for sending data to and from the switch.
Then inside the switch, instead of having lots of PCB traces, we have a lot of fiber and SENKO helped with some of this including the PIC Coupler, faceplate, mid-board, and ELSFP.
Something that we see in a lot of these switches is now pluggable CPO connectors on the switch chip and then internal couplers. Six years ago CPO switches did not have a real field serviceable layout. That is something the industry has been working on as part of getting these switches deployed.
This is a small note, but something else that is different in a CPO switch is the distance between the switch package and the faceplate. Here is the Teralynx 10 switch for some idea of how switch designers try keeping electrical traces much shorter.
This is a closer look at all of the fiber inside the switch that is replacing electrical traces either in PCB or added via internal cables.
Here is another angle and a look at some of the fiber guides to ensure proper bends.
Here is a look at the Marvell TX9190 Demo switch chip where we can see the pluggable packages.
The other switch at the booth had the Mikros liquid cooling for the switch chip.
Even in the liquid cooled switch, there are still fans since the management processor, light sources and so forth are still air cooled. This is clearly a demo switch as we can also see an internal power supply.
Sitll, there are neat things in this switch like the liquid cooling tubes being routed around the fiber.
Overall, there is a lot neat here.
Final Words
This was one of the demos at the show that had a lot of folks around it because it was both visually stunning, and also CPO is happening. We are going to see a major CPO AI cluster build-out in the next few quarters. Those are the same installations that are liquid cooling GPUs so they also want liquid cooled switches.
If you want to see Marvell’s current generation 51.2T copper switch, here is the Marvell Teralynx 10 51.2T 64-port 800GbE Switch:
Are the front-panel pluggable optics ordinary QSFP/OSFPs, or are they something unusual? It looks like they’re fed by fiber from the CPO. Are they doing optical->electrical->[QO]SFP->optical?
Also, what connector are the front-panel fiber connectors? They don’t look quite right for MTP/MPO.
The fibre connectors look like Senko’s SN: https://www.senko.com/sn-series/
@Scott Laird
Those aren’t pluggable optics but laser source modules. They are providing the medium that gets modulated by co-packaged optics on the chip into the “outputs” (green connectors). This basically splits the traditional pluggable optics concept into separate parts.
As for the connectors they look like MDC, but not quite. They are labeled in groups of four, like 1/1; 1/2; 1/3; 1/4; which suggests they aren’t natively dense like MTP/MPO.
Green fiber-connector housings on front panel might be VSFF, such as MMC or similar:
https://www.usconec.com/connectors/mmc-connectors
The front panel connectors are SN-MT from Senko.
It’s not really a demo if it’s not running traffic. Who can say if any of it actually works?