OIF Launches High-Density Connector Project, Industry Resources

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) concluded its Q1 2025 Technical and MA&E Committees Member Meeting with the launch of a high-density connector project as well as a new common management interface specification (CMIS) implementation agreement (IA).

The project will address current optical module electrical connector limitations in signal integrity, bandwidth density, power distribution, and control connections. The high-density connector project will produce a requirements document that addresses existing constraints and sets the stage for enhanced scalability and performance. OIF technical committee chair Karl Bois said that the project builds on work from the OIF Physical and Link Layer Working Group, which previously created interoperability foundations for high-speed interconnect applications.

The newly released CMIS versatile control set (VCS) IA will extend and generalize the current CMIS base control sets to allow support and control of advanced signal integrity (SI) capabilities while maintaining compatibility with existing CMIS hosts. The CMIS-VCS IA defines an extensible list of SI parameters, including their characteristics and representation, and an optional versatile allocation within the CMIS control set. A CMIS-VCS-compliant module makes this module-specific list of SI parameters and their locations available to the host.