Industry coalition forms to standardize optical connections for AI data centers

3M (NYSE: MMM) announced it joined a multi-source agreement with 16 technology companies to develop standardized specifications for expanded beam optical connectivity in AI infrastructure. The coalition includes AMD, Cisco, Meta, Oracle, and other industry participants.

The agreement focuses on creating open, interoperable specifications for expanded beam optical technology, which the companies describe as offering advantages in reliability and maintenance for high-density AI environments. The group aims to reduce complexity and accelerate deployment timelines for AI data centers.

Participating companies include 3M, Accelink, Aperion, AMD, Amphenol, Arista Networks, Cisco, Meta, Molex, Nexthop-ai, Oracle, Senko, Source Photonics, Sumitomo, TE Connectivity, viaPhoton, and Xscape Photonics.

"As AI workloads scale, the physical layer of data centers is being pushed to new limits — requiring optical connectivity solutions that are not only high-performance, but also interoperable and scalable across a growing ecosystem," said Alex An, vice president of 3M's data center vertical.

Oracle will serve as co-chair of the initiative. "Expanded beam technology can overcome these bottlenecks, enabling more resilient cluster topologies and future rack-scale optical architectures," said Rajagopal Subramaniyan, senior vice president of OCI networking at Oracle.

The multi-source agreement will provide a framework for members to contribute to shared specifications covering multiple expanded beam optical connector configurations. The technical working group has begun development of the first connector specification.

The coalition remains open to additional members from the data center and networking sectors, according to the announcement.

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