Huawei and Tencent jointly Release Innovative LRO Pluggable Module Solution Based on AI Cluster

Recently, Huawei and Tencent jointly delivered a speech on the theme of “LRO based Pluggable VCSEL and SiP Transceivers for AI clusters” at OCP EMEA2025. Maxim Kuschnerov, an expert from Huawei, introduced his thoughts on the optical interconnection solution for AI computing clusters and the verification of LRO based pluggable optical modules.

LRO (linear receiver optics) optical module is a pluggable optical module that retains a re timer at the transmitting end and uses linear reception at the receiving end. It is a compromise solution between full ODSP optical module and linear pluggable optical module (LPO). The LRO scheme can maximize the retention of the performance, interconnection, intelligent operation and maintenance advantages of pluggable modules, while reducing module power consumption by 30%;

Maxim mentioned that “an excellent engineering system always comes from excellent balance in all aspects”, and the next generation of AI computing cluster networks focuses more on reliability, IO density, power consumption, latency, and cost. The LRO scheme can meet the requirements of reducing power consumption and latency in AI intelligent computing scenarios, while retaining the feasibility of interconnection and interoperability with the current fully re determined time module. The LRO optical module has relaxed the electrical design requirements for the host equipment, further reducing costs and maintenance workload.

The report presents the test results of 400G SR4 LRO and 400G DR4 LRO based on a 128 port switch. The LRO architecture is insensitive to differences in electrical link insertion loss, and the bit error rate performance of all ports is better than 1E-8, approaching that of traditional fully reconfigurable optical modules. The performance of the 112G LRO optical module based on VCSEL chip in transmitting 100 meter OM4 multimode fiber is less than 1dB, which means that there is a highly promising low-power and low latency interconnection solution in the massive 100m intelligent computing transmission scenarios. Considering the evolution towards the 224G generation, the LRO SiP scheme has good evolutionability, and the LRO VCSEL also has feasibility with breakthroughs in chip performance. LRO will provide a good solution choice for the low power consumption/low latency requirements of the 224G system;

Overall, Huawei and Tencent have conducted joint research and analysis, and believe that the 112G SiP/VCSEL LRO scheme optical module can meet the current network application requirements, with performance comparable to traditional full ODSP schemes; The 224G generation LRO scheme will provide an effective and technically feasible solution for reducing power consumption; At the same time, it emphasizes that LRO can reduce the difficulty of PCB design, module initiator design, and reduce network costs/power consumption/latency, etc;