AI news Oct 10, 2026

Look back · deep dive, August 18, 2026

Deep dive called optics late; OCP's deadline hasn't arrived

The switch from copper to optics now has a date you can check: AMD officially places its next-generation MI500 in 2027, and its launch event said that generation "supports both copper and optics"; NVIDIA's matching point is in 2028. That deep dive's reading at the time, "optics will be late and copper wins in the near term," held up only halfway: NVIDIA's own next-generation copper rack is stuck on yields for a 78-layer circuit board, and volume production has slipped to 2028 (from that deep dive; original sources are listed there). Inside the rack, where connections are densest, both optics and copper are running late. Keep the two claims apart, because they aren't about the same thing: "optics delayed" refers to co-packaged optics (optical components built straight into the chip package) on the general-purpose network switches sold to everyone, while "AMD 2027" refers to one vendor's optical option for its own product generation. That deep dive set its own nearest checkpoint: the fourth-quarter-2026 deadline for the first silicon-photonics specification from OCP, the cloud-hardware industry alliance. Today is October 10 and the deadline hasn't arrived; whether the spec has come out early, we didn't check this round. The takeaway: don't assume either optics or copper arrives on schedule inside the rack; the next checkable date is that OCP deadline. The full deep dive is published in Chinese and Japanese only; there is no English edition.