NVIDIA and Cisco Launch USFP Pluggable Optics Standard for AI Data Centers With TE Connectivity and Amphenol

NVIDIA and Cisco jointly introduced a new pluggable optics form factor called USFP on October 12, designed to help AI factory builders scale compute capacity within the same network footprint while cutting networking's share of the overall power budget. The new transceivers allow AI infrastructure operators to expand GPU-scale deployments without requiring proportional increases in physical network space or energy consumption.

The two companies are building out the USFP ecosystem in collaboration with connector and component specialists TE Connectivity and Amphenol, signaling an industry-wide push to standardize the form factor across the AI data center supply chain.