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// 63d agoINFRASTRUCTURE
OCI MSA shifts AI interconnects to optics
The Interposer's "Approaching a Crab Problem" essay uses a crab-and-phase-transition metaphor to argue that AI networking is shifting from copper to optics. It points to Broadcom's OFC 2026 announcement about the OCI MSA as evidence that the industry is converging on an open optical scale-up specification.
// ANALYSIS
The piece is deliberately surreal, but the phase-transition thesis is real: once bandwidth, heat, and signal loss become the bottleneck, the market starts selecting for optics.
- –Broadcom says the OCI MSA is meant to create a plug-and-play, multi-vendor optical scale-up spec for AI infrastructure.
- –The hardware stack is moving beyond switches and GPUs into optics, SerDes, retimers, co-packaged optics, and 1.6T/3.2T transceivers.
- –This is an ecosystem story as much as a speed story; optics only becomes the default if vendors can interoperate at scale.
- –For AI builders, network architecture is becoming part of model economics, not an afterthought.
// TAGS
oci-msagpucloudllminference
DISCOVERED
63d ago
2026-03-24
PUBLISHED
63d ago
2026-03-24
RELEVANCE
8/ 10
AUTHOR
headspreader