Summary:
- At HUAWEI CONNECT 2026, Huawei unveiled the industry's first NPO optical engine with Built-in Light Source, Hi-ONE, offering a total capacity of 7.2 TB/s and enabling Huawei to be the first to mass produce such an optical engine.
- Hi-ONE has been applied to the Ascend 960 SuperPoD, built on the "UnifiedBus plus Hi-ONE" architecture. This has reduced the number of 800G optical modules within the SuperPoD by 48,000, significantly lowered system power consumption, and enhanced reliability.
- In May 2026, the standard proposal for "12.8 TB/s NPO Module", jointly submitted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Huawei, and other companies, was officially initiated by the OIF, receiving support from more than 40 global industry chain vendors.
SHANGHAI, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 17 September 2026 – At HUAWEI CONNECT 2026, Huawei unveiled the industry's first NPO optical engine with Built-in Light Source, Hi-ONE, offering a total capacity of 7.2 TB/s and enabling Huawei to be the first to mass produce such an optical engine. The Ascend 960 SuperPoD, built on the "UnifiedBus plus Hi-ONE" architecture, has already adopted the Hi-ONE optical engine powered by NPO. Hi-ONE is the industry's first-ever optical engine to adopt a built-in light source architecture, achieving high-density, high-speed optical interconnect while significantly reducing power consumption and latency for signal transmission. The launch of Hi-ONE marks the beginning of NPO technology's transition from industry consensus to large-scale commercial use, injecting new momentum into the AI computing industry.
Huawei Unveils the Industry's First NPO Optical Engine with Built-in Light Source, Hi-ONE, Leading the Way in High-Speed Optical Interconnect Technology Innovation
NPO technology path: Balancing innovation and ecosystem continuity
NPO technology realizes close interaction between optical and electrical signals but maintains the independence of the optical engine, thus maximizing the continuity of customer usage habits and industry ecosystems. By following this technology path, Huawei has developed the innovative Hi-ONE optical engine, which currently stands as the NPO product with the highest transmission capacity in the industry and the first NPO product to adopt a built-in light source architecture. Rooted in self-developed technologies, Huawei has achieved breakthroughs in key areas such as bandwidth, reliability, power consumption, and latency.
High bandwidth and high reliability: Hi-ONE is the first optical engine to integrate 36 channels of optical transceivers, significantly reducing the number of discrete components and lowering failure rates at the very source. Hi-ONE integrates key technologies, including compound optical chips, silicon photonic chips, and optoelectronic RF chips. Through a balanced design of optical, mechanical, electrical, magnetic, and thermal elements, Hi-ONE supports a transmission capacity of 7.2 TB/s on a single optical engine, and makes built-in light sources a reality in the NPO engine. As a result, overall reliability is improved by 10 times, ensuring the stable operation of long-duration training tasks.
Low power consumption and low latency: With the adoption of a linear direct-drive architecture, Hi-ONE eliminates the need for high-power oDSP chips, cutting power consumption by approximately 66% and latency by about 90%. This both lowers energy costs and boosts communications efficiency.
Standards and ecosystems drive industry consensus
Alongside product innovation, Huawei has also made progress in NPO standards and industry ecosystem development. In May 2026, the standard proposal for "12.8 TB/s NPO Module", jointly submitted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Huawei, and other companies, was officially initiated by the OIF, with support from more than 40 industry chain vendors worldwide.
From technological breakthroughs to product application, and from international standards to industry ecosystem development, Huawei is driving NPO from industry consensus to large-scale commercial use. It is achieving this through a combination of strong technological innovation and open collaboration with global industry partners, with the ultimate goal of shaping a new AI computing industry landscape.
FAQs:
Q1: What is NPO?
A: NPO, short for Near-Packaged Optics, is an optical interconnect technology that keeps optical engines close to switching chips, shortening the transmission distance between optical and electrical signals while maintaining the independence of optical engines.
Q2: What is the OIF?
A: The OIF, or Optical Internetworking Forum, plays a key role as a core standards developer and interoperability promoter in the optical communications industry. It has huge influence, particularly in the fields of high-speed optical modules and data center interconnect.
Hashtag: #Huawei
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WUHAN, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 17 September 2026 – On September 13, the inauguration ceremony of the Optics Valley International Communication Alliance was held. Representatives of 13 founding member companies — including FiberHome, China Construction Third Engineering Bureau, HGTECH, YHKT Entertainment, Huakang Clean and Shenglong Electric — and of more than 100 other Optics Valley enterprises attended the event.
On September 13th, the inauguration ceremony of the Optics Valley International Communication Alliance was held.
The ceremony was held under the theme "Chasing the Light, Connecting the World." In recent years, Optics Valley's innovations have been reaching the world at an accelerating pace. The overseas social media matrix of "Optics Valley of China" has continued to attract attention, and "made in Optics Valley" products such as the Optics Valley Photon sky rail and driverless minibuses have been repeatedly applauded by spokespersons of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, becoming a "calling card for China" in the eyes of overseas netizens. To help companies move from "product export" to "brand export," Optics Valley has worked with the News & Information Service Center of Xinhua News Agency and other partners to establish the Optics Valley International Communication Alliance, opening international communication resources to Optics Valley companies and providing them with one-stop services such as overseas public opinion response and multilingual content production, so as to serve as a "navigator" for companies going global. As the national news agency of China, Xinhua News Agency has 184 overseas branches and has established cooperative links with more than 2,000 media outlets around the world.
Speaking as a representative of the founding members, Li Lei, vice president of FiberHome, said that FiberHome's business now covers more than 100 countries and regions, with wholly owned subsidiaries in 36 countries and three overseas optical cable plants in Ecuador, Thailand and Hungary; at its Philippine subsidiary, locally hired employees account for more than 95 percent of the workforce. "We will stay committed to high-quality global expansion and to deepening localized operations, and, with the platform of the Optics Valley International Communication Alliance, we will not only export China's advanced communication technologies and solutions, but also serve as a bridge for industrial cooperation and people-to-people connectivity between China and the rest of the world," he said.
Huakang Clean, also a founding member, is a leading enterprise in China's cleanroom industry. It has made going global a core strategy for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, completed its market layout in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa, and exported mature cleanroom technology solutions. It looks forward to deepening cross-border collaboration and strengthening brand building through the alliance platform.
At the ceremony, a think tank report was released — "Going Global, Competing Worldwide: How 'Optics Valley of China' Polishes Its International Calling Card in Service of Building a Strong Nation in Science and Technology — Practices and Insights," written by Reference News Press · Reference Think Tank. According to the report, leading enterprises represented by the "Seven Stars of Optics Valley" have seen average annual growth in overseas revenue of more than 30 percent. The report sums up Optics Valley's global communication path as "one strategic direction and ten keywords": Optics Valley takes serving the building of a strong nation in science and technology as its strategic direction, and adheres to central-local coordination, AI empowerment, going global as a team, and tailored measures for different markets.
The report states that Optics Valley has witnessed and written the confidence and determination of a brand of a strong nation in science and technology going global, and that when the light of "Optics Valley of China" illuminates the global industrial landscape, it conveys the narrative of the times in which China takes part in global competition through technological self-reliance and self-strengthening and shares its opportunities with the world. The report suggests that, for Optics Valley to keep polishing its international calling card in service of building a strong nation in science and technology, three things need to be fully considered: first, elevating the Optics Valley story from "corporate behavior" to a "national narrative"; second, making full use of AI, a global knowledge-service infrastructure, to carry out global communication; and third, moving from "communication empowering industry" to "communication as an industrial capability."
A training session on overseas communication capacity building was held alongside the inauguration ceremony, with David Wei, founder of Vision Knight Capital, and Cao Yang, deputy director of the International Communication Department of the News & Information Service Center of Xinhua News Agency, invited to give lectures.
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