CPO's bottleneck isn't the chip — it's how 1,152 fibers get into 1U. At ECOC 2026, Corning broke CPO reliability down line by line: under 40 FIT in total, with 38 FIT coming from the fiber array alone. It is the first time CPO's volume-production risk has been translated into operating numbers — and the answer points to coupling.

CPO's real bottleneck isn't bandwidth; it's whether a fiber can be detached and reattached. SENKO's elastic averaging gets repeatability under 0.15 dB and interchangeability under 0.5 dB, unlocking CPO serviceability. Module-level attach and customers remain open: technically validated, not yet in volume.