By Calvin Liew
Publication Date: 2026-10-13 13:06:00
NVIDIA and Cisco have announced plans for Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a new high-density optical module with 400Gb/s per lane, aimed at the next generation of AI factories that use pluggable transceivers.
As AI models grow and inference demand expands, AI factories need more bandwidth per connection and more connections per switch. Once a switch hits capacity, expanding the network usually means adding switch layers and optical links, which raises latency, power use, and cost.
Therefore, USFP is meant to let builders move from 200Gb/s per lane to 400Gb/s-per-lane Ethernet AI fabrics without overhauling their data center infrastructure, while keeping the pluggable deployment model that has been proven across multiple network generations.
The first planned USFP transceivers pack 16 full-duplex lanes into an OSFP-sized footprint, supporting both switches and SuperNICs, with room to expand to 32 or more lanes later. By doubling both lane count and per-lane bandwidth,…
