As 800G optical modules scale up in volume and 1.6T moves into sampling, the focus of industry discussion has quietly shifted from how to make pluggable modules more cheaply to what optical coupling equipment must become in the era of CPO (co-packaged optics) and silicon photonics. As an equipment vendor that has long served optical communications packaging, we at Xingte would like to trace the generational timeline and outline how equipment requirements are reshaped, generation by generation. While this main thread may seem to concern only optical precision, it in fact touches almost every core equipment capability - motion control, software algorithms, loading/unloading and line integration.
Phase 1: The Pluggable Era (400G and Earlier)
In the pluggable era of 400G and earlier, a module typically contained only one or a few optical paths that needed alignment. Beam spots were large and tolerances were wide. At this stage, manual coupling and semi-automatic equipment could basically cover production needs, and the core requirements for equipment were adequate capability, low cost and ease of use. The experience of optical engineers often mattered more than equipment parameters in determining yield: a skilled master could complete an alignment in a few dozen seconds based on microscope imaging and power-meter readout, while a newcomer might need several times as long. Competition among equipment vendors at the time focused mainly on travel range, speed and basic accuracy; metrics that are critical today, such as sub-micron closed loop and multi-channel parallelism, were not the primary ask of customers. In a sense, that was an era in which the person was the equipment.
Phase 2: The 800G/1.6T Transition
Entering 800G/1.6T, the channel count per module doubles, and an FA (fiber array) must align multiple beams at once. Beam spots shrink and tolerances enter the sub-micron range. In this stage, fully automatic active coupling moves from being a high-end option to a production mainstream requirement: six-DOF alignment, real-time optical-power feedback and high repeat positioning accuracy become baseline capabilities, and equipment vendors begin to compete on peak-search speed, loading/unloading efficiency and line-level through-yield. The core proposition of the coupling equipment we deliver in this stage is to make single-path alignment stable and multi-channel alignment consistent. At the same time, customers begin to require traceable equipment data, statistically analyzable yield and shorter changeover time - equipment is no longer just an actuator, but a node in the production-line data system.
Phase 3: The CPO Co-Packaged Era
CPO and silicon photonics push this logic to the extreme. In a co-packaged architecture, the optical engine sits extremely close to the switch ASIC, the fiber array interfaces directly to the silicon photonic chip, and a single optical engine often requires dozens or even hundreds of active alignment operations. This places three new demands on equipment. First, multi-channel simultaneous calibration: instead of aligning one by one slowly, the system must scan and lock in parallel. Second, sub-micron repeat positioning must remain stable over long periods, because a single die attach failure can affect an entire tray. Third, the equipment must be deeply integrated with the silicon photonic packaging process flow, so that coupling, curing and inspection are completed almost at the same work cell. It is fair to say that coupling equipment in the CPO era is no longer an alignment station, but a high-precision optical packaging work-cell system whose complexity, compared with standalone machines of the 800G era, rises not linearly but stepwise.
Xingte's Professional Outlook on the Industry Evolution
Along this timeline, we at Xingte hold three judgments. First, the center of gravity of equipment is moving from single-path high precision toward multi-channel parallel high precision; whoever can compress hundreds of alignment operations into an acceptable takt time will hold the entry ticket to the CPO era. Second, high precision is no longer an isolated metric; it must hold together with high takt and high consistency, otherwise yield will be eroded by process variation. Third, equipment vendors must understand silicon photonic devices more deeply - waveguide design, fiber-array packaging and curing stress all feed back into how the coupling strategy is defined.
We also note that CPO will not replace pluggable modules overnight; the two will coexist for a considerable period. Pluggables still hold cost and serviceability advantages in short-reach data-center interconnects, while CPO evolves toward higher bandwidth density on the switch side. This means equipment vendors must serve both process routes at the same time - sub-micron active coupling for pluggables, and multi-channel co-packaged alignment for CPO. We are refining our next-generation coupling and packaging work cells along these three directions, and look forward to working with more optical-module and silicon-photonics partners to move CPO from prototype toward volume production. Generational technology shifts wait for no vendor, but the accumulation of equipment capability is built up little by little across every leap.
Note: descriptions in this article regarding alignment count per module and channel density in CPO are generalizations of industry technology evolution; specific solutions and parameters should refer to public technical materials of individual vendors.
