At CES2026, we captured something that seemed almost mundane at first. At the same time, when we looked at the photos again, NVIDIA is doing something that is going to push the industry, and we are not just talking about co-packaged optics and integrating light sources into the switch.
NVIDIA’s Quantum-X Photonics
The first co-packaged optics switch NVIDIA has widely shown, and has been showing for some time, is the NVIDIA Quantum-X InfiniBand Photonics Switch.
NVIDIA has already stated that this is an early implementation of its co-packaged optics. Perhaps the interesting part is that you can see 18 pluggable light sources and 144 MPO/MTP fiber ports. That is still a lot of 800Gbps ports, but the box is huge.
NVIDIA Spectrum-X Pluggable Optics Liquid-Cooled Switch
Taking a quick detour for a moment is the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switch using pluggable optics.
This design packs 64 ports into 2U of rack space. You can see liquid cooling and internal cables to connect the ports.
This is an interesting design since the cooling for the optics is the majority of the 2U faceplate, along with the internal chips. Even just between this, with 64-ports in 2U versus the Quantum-X CPO with ~36 ports per U, you can see where NVIDIA is going.
NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics
When we say that the NVIDIA Quantum-X is more of a first-generation product and Spectrum-X is a refinement, you can see it clearly in the packaging. Spectrum-X increased the integration, but also has a neat form factor.
NVIDIA also had its 2U co-packaged optics switch on display at CES 2026, and the fact that it is a 2U switch is the most unremarkable part of it.
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