NVIDIA and Cisco Introduce New Pluggable Optical Module Form Factor to Scale AI Factories

NVIDIA and Cisco jointly launched a new pluggable optical module form factor, USFP, aimed at scaling AI factory networks. USFP is the first module to support 400Gb/s electrical signaling per lane, with a single-module capacity of up to 12.8Tb/s, enabling AI builders to connect more computing systems without adding network tiers while reducing power consumption per bit of data transmitted. Compared with existing 200Gb/s-per-lane optical modules, USFP delivers 4x the bandwidth density and 1.3x the energy efficiency. NVIDIA and Cisco are working with TE Connectivity and Amphenol to build a multi-source hardware ecosystem around USFP.