Scale-Across AI Networking With Co-Packaged Optics
Futurum, Tuesday, April 28th, 2026
Scale-across AI networking designs using co-packaged optics enable data centers to overcome power and cooling constraints.
This report examines how AI data centers are facing significant power and cooling constraints, with 22.5% of companies unable to build out infrastructure fast enough. Scale-across networking designs that connect multiple buildings and sites offer a solution by allowing operators to distribute workloads across geographic locations.
While InfiniBand dominates GPU networking, Ethernet-based approaches combined with emerging optical technologies like co-packaged optics (CPO) and linear pluggable optics (LPO) can reduce resource utilization and increase performance.
Cloud providers and companies like Equinix are also adopting scale-across strategies to expand capacity and serve customers seeking multi-location deployments for improved performance and stability.