TE's simulations show near-packaged copper loses twice as much as co-packaged copper at 448G, mostly from the first 100 mm next to the ASIC (PCB trace + board connector). The price of CPC is moving the connector into the ASIC package, where heat and skew spend part of the margin again.

Amphenol used OCP to show how far copper can go; TE spent its time on 800V power and the passive optical path. At 1 MW per rack the connector becomes an active element, and as optics move toward the package, fiber termination becomes the new volume bottleneck.

Four connector makers laid out 448G pluggable interfaces: card edge versus two-piece. All clear PAM6, but headroom above PAM4 is only 0–14 GHz, and it does not split by camp.