Cisco and NVIDIA introduce new pluggable optics form factor for AI factories

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Oct 13, 2026, 23:30 UTC

On October 12, 2026, Cisco and NVIDIA jointly introduced a new pluggable optics form factor called USFP, designed to support 1.6Tbps Ethernet fabrics in AI data centers and what both companies are calling AI factories. The USFP module is physically smaller than existing pluggable optics standards, with the explicit goal of increasing port density at those speeds. On the same day, DG Matrix separately announced its Interport 360 SST and Interport OS, a hardware and software pairing built on the NVIDIA MGX platform and aimed at the same AI factory deployment market.

The significance here sits at the infrastructure layer that most public AI conversation ignores. Moving data between thousands of GPUs fast enough to keep them productively busy is one of the core engineering constraints on large-scale AI training and inference. A pluggable optics standard at 1.6Tbps represents a meaningful step up in the bandwidth available inside a single facility, and a smaller form factor means operators can fit more connections into the same rack or chassis space. What is genuinely in dispute, or at least unresolved, is whether USFP will achieve the kind of broad industry adoption needed to become a real standard, or whether it will remain a Cisco-NVIDIA bilateral specification while other vendors pursue competing approaches. The simultaneous DG Matrix announcement, also tying into the NVIDIA MGX ecosystem, suggests NVIDIA is actively building a supply chain around this infrastructure vision, but the depth of third-party commitment is not yet established.

None of the three camps, Pro-AI, Anti-AI, or Middle Ground, had published reactions to this announcement at the time of writing. Pro-AI voices would typically welcome this kind of development as necessary plumbing that enables larger and more capable AI systems, framing it as responsible investment in infrastructure. Anti-AI voices would likely question whether accelerating the buildout of AI factories serves broader public interests, and might raise concerns about energy consumption at the scale these fabrics are designed to support. Middle Ground observers would probably treat this as a significant but narrow technical milestone, worth watching for adoption signals before drawing conclusions about its real-world impact.

The clearest thing to watch next is whether other major networking and optics vendors, companies outside the Cisco-NVIDIA partnership, move to support the USFP form factor. Announcements from optical module manufacturers or rival networking firms adopting or rejecting the standard would be the most direct signal of whether USFP becomes infrastructure bedrock or a proprietary footnote.