At the end of the AI computing power race, it often gets stuck in the "vessels" that transmit data between chips. On October 12th local time, NVIDIA and Cisco jointly launched the industry's first hot-pluggable optical module specification USFP supporting 400Gbps/lane high-speed signals, effectively widening this bottleneck channel.
Compared to existing OSFP optical modules, USFP is about the same size but houses a denser core. The first batch of products already integrate 16 full-duplex channels, and can be expanded to 32 or more later, with throughput reaching up to 12.8Tb/s. The most critical multiple is written very clearly: its bandwidth is four times that of current 200G/lane hot-pluggable optical modules; supported by 400G SerDes technology, its power efficiency is also 1.3 times that of the latter.
The connector has been redesigned. The new two-dimensional array connector uses a two-step insertion scheme—first, the module is inserted, and then the high-speed contacts are connected in the second step. This reduces contact wear, maintains signal integrity, and makes the force required for each insertion more predictable. It supports 100W of power consumption, which actually simplifies the design on the switch side, eliminating the need for additional power and cooling efforts.
