OCP Global Summit 2026 | TE Connectivity | Gaurav Jain, Ram Kasiraman | Solving Power Density and Bandwidth Challenges

2 days ago

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1. Why TE Is the One Telling This Story

In the data center, TE has long been seen as "the connector company." This talk set out to change that image: Gaurav Jain used whip to chip (from the power-distribution whip all the way to the compute chip) to describe TE's power portfolio, and Ram Kasiraman used chip to system to describe its optical portfolio. Both speakers carried the same message: TE wants to be a solution provider, not just a component vendor.

The structure of the talk is itself a signal. The first ten minutes were all about power, the last ten about optics, and high-speed copper barely appeared, apart from one line that "copper will still play a major role at short reach." Compare that with Amphenol at the same event, which started from the loss budget of 224G copper and argued for copper-optics co-design, and with the interconnect revenue mix we broke down in Earnings Highlights: Amphenol (APH) | Q2 FY2026: the two connector giants chose very different battlefields to emphasize at OCP.

Same industry, same stage: Amphenol talked about how far copper can go, TE talked about how the junctions for power and light must be redesigned.

2. Unpacking 800V: 16x Less Current, the Problem Just Moves

The case for higher voltage is simple: at fixed power, higher voltage means lower current, so conductors can be thinner and lighter with lower resistive loss. For a 1 MW rack:

50V: about 20,000 A
800V: about 1,250 A, 1/16 of the current; on the same conductor, I²R loss falls to roughly 1/256 in theory

▲ A 1 MW rack needs about 20,000 A at 50 V but only about 1,250 A at 800 V; current drops 16x, but every safety specification has to be rewritten (Image source: Simple Tech Trend original, data from TE Connectivity's 2026 OCP Global Summit presentation)

But Jain was blunt: this just moves the problem somewhere else. TE's slide lists six new connection requirements that come with 800VDC: touch protection, creepage and clearance, controlled mating, interlocks, de-energized maintenance and connector condition monitoring. A 50V rack can be worked on live; at 800V, every service action requires de-energizing first.

TE's products fall into three blocks:

800V Sidecar: high-power scalable options for busbars and PSUs
800V IT rack busbar: 250 kW to 1.6 MW, with scalable depth options
Compact Mating: sense and precharge functions fitted within a 35 mm busbar width

▲ TE's 800VDC portfolio: six new connectivity needs, 800V IT rack busbars covering 250 kW to 1.6 MW, and mating that must fit into a 35 mm width (Image source: TE Connectivity | 2026 OCP Global Summit presentation (04:05))

TE's credential is cross-industry experience: automotive, energy and switchgear have handled 800V for years. The point is that high voltage in the data center is not new physics; it is automotive and grid safety practice moving into the rack.

3. One Sidecar, Two Paths

TE splits today's rack power architecture into two paths; the key difference is where the final conversion happens:

Path	IT rack voltage	Key components	Power level
Path A	High voltage (800V)	HV busbar connector, HV busbar, rack-to-rack connections	1OU rack-to-rack link, about 500 kW to 1 MW
Path B	50V	Liquid-cooled busbar, BB4000, multi-beam HV-to-LV connector	Liquid-cooled busbar prototypes at 750 kW to 1 MW and above

Path B is today's mainstream. Jain said liquid-cooled busbars are "not a new term anymore"; they started above 200 kW, and TE is now prototyping 750 kW and 1 MW-plus versions. Path A is where things change most: as voltage rises, conversion moves downstream, and the link from sidecar to IT rack needs an entire new high-voltage ecosystem. TE's headline here is a 1OU (Open Rack unit) rack-to-rack power connection for air- and liquid-cooled systems, described verbally as 500 kW to nearly 1 MW, with integrated interlock, presence and temperature signals. Jain added that once DC busways can power the IT rack directly, the sidecar itself could eventually go away.

Inside the compute tray, 800V does not eliminate conversion; it just happens elsewhere. TE listed IT-Gear, ELCON Micro+, RAPID LOCK, ICCON socket inserts and 12/48V MPIC, stressing that the same families cover 800V, 400V, 50V, 12V and point-of-load voltages.

▲ One sidecar, two paths: Path A to high-voltage IT racks and Path B to 50V racks, plus the power contacts inside the compute tray from IT-Gear to ICCON (Image source: TE Connectivity | 2026 OCP Global Summit presentation (08:05))

4. The Connector Becomes an Active Element: Clean Power and Smart Power

This is the idea most worth taking away. In Jain's words, at a 1 MW rack the connector is no longer a passive element; it becomes an active part of the system.

Clean Power: as current rises, connections need low resistance and low inductance to avoid voltage drop, voltage droop and current crowding that creates hotspots. The closer to the GPU, the lower the inductance must be, because it directly affects real GPU performance. TE has built simulation and power-integrity teams aiming for first-pass success.
Smart Power: temperature, current, presence and leak detection integrated into busbar connectors, so the system can predict failures instead of waiting for them.

Jain also noted the limit: smart sensing does not replace the creepage, touch protection and de-energizing procedures a high-voltage system needs anyway; it only adds "one more lever for predictive maintenance." Put simply, the value of a power connector is shifting from "it conducts" to "it measures".

5. The Bandwidth Half: the Optical Boundary Moves Toward the Package, and Service Must Be Rethought

Ram Kasiraman leads TE's fiber array unit (FAU) product line. His argument has three layers:

Demand: AI economics chases more tokens per dollar, so compute domains keep growing, from single-rack scale-up to cross-rack scale-up
Pressure: bandwidth density, reach and energy per bit all rise at once, and equalization and retiming power grow with speed and distance
Result: electrical I/O is pushed to its limit, and the optical boundary moves closer to compute

The real turning point is serviceability. With pluggables, optics sit at the faceplate; if one fails you pull it and swap it without touching compute. With NPO, the optical engine moves inside the chassis; with CPO, it sits next to the ASIC on the substrate. TE sets three requirements: protect high-value compute, create separable optical interfaces, and lock in optical precision during manufacturing. The last one is the most important: you cannot rely on field technicians to do the alignment.

▲ The optical boundary moves from the faceplate (pluggable) into the chassis (NPO) and then next to the package (CPO); TE splits the passive optical path into three layers: chip-to-fiber, fiber-to-fiber and system interconnect (Image source: Simple Tech Trend original, data from TE Connectivity's 2026 OCP Global Summit presentation)

On TE's slide these three layers are: FAU (precisely coupling high-density fiber arrays, including 2D M×N), connectors and adapters (in partnership with Senko, US Conec and 3M), and fanouts, backplanes and fiber assemblies (routing high fiber counts across boards and racks). Serviceability is NPO's core advantage, as we discussed in NPO Is Not a Stepping Stone to CPO; TE is effectively writing the requirements for NPO and CPO serviceability from the passive-component side.

6. FusionForge: the Volume Bottleneck in Passive Optics Is Termination

Kasiraman named the bottleneck clearly: large numbers of fibers must be precisely aligned and then terminated. Today's methods, V-grooves or drilled-hole arrays, are labor-intensive and cannot keep up with the coming volumes.

FusionForge uses fully automated active alignment and then laser-welds fibers directly onto a fused silica or glass substrate:

Density: 1D, 2D or multi-row arrays, with roughly thousand-fiber arrays already shown, according to the talk
Performance: every fiber actively aligned, sub-micron precision, ±1 degree PM fiber clocking, and no epoxy in the optical path
Compatibility: grating couplers, VCSELs, micro-VCSELs and microLEDs, plus single-mode, multimode and multicore fiber
Process: an automated platform with almost no manual labor

▲ FusionForge builds high-density fiber arrays with automated active alignment and laser welding: sub-micron accuracy, ±1° polarization-maintaining rotation and no epoxy (Image source: TE Connectivity | 2026 OCP Global Summit presentation (19:53))

This slide matters most in the context of slow-and-wide. As we wrote in What Killed Slow-and-Wide Was Not Physics but 60,000 Fibers (in Chinese), fiber count is the real challenge. FusionForge supports microLEDs and micro-VCSELs, aiming squarely at that route's biggest pain point.

7. Risks and Counterarguments

No timelines or pricing: the talk gave no production dates, volumes or cost figures. The 800V IT rack busbar, the 1OU rack-to-rack link and FusionForge are all still at the demo and prototype stage; words like "prototype" and "concept" should be taken at a discount.
Not OCP specifications: TE's slide states that the products shown are "for reference only and are not currently licensed contributions to any OCP specifications." For 800V interfaces to become an industry standard, watch how Thursday's Open Rack busbar interface discussion converges.
The high-speed copper gap: TE did not discuss 224G/448G copper, cable backplanes or near-package connectors. This may be time allocation, or it may mean TE chose not to compete head-on with Amphenol on copper on this stage.
Too few FusionForge numbers: "low loss, high repeatability" came without insertion-loss figures, yield and cycle time for thousand-fiber arrays were not disclosed, and the cost comparison with V-grooves stopped at "less labor."
The 800V timeline is not in TE's hands: sidecars are already being designed, but feeding 800V directly into the IT rack depends on GPU vendors and hyperscalers; connector makers follow.

8. What It Means for Taiwan's Supply Chain

Power and rack makers need to learn high-voltage safety. Touch protection, creepage, interlocks and de-energized service at 800V must be re-qualified by power supply, busbar and rack assembly vendors alike. Delta Electronics has publicly shown its 800V HVDC product direction, and Taiwan's rack ODMs are the largest assembly base for AI racks, so both ends will face TE's six requirements directly.
Connector competition shifts from part numbers to simulation and sensing. TE's pitch was not new part numbers but power-integrity simulation and embedded sensing. Taiwanese power connector makers that compete only on current rating will stay at the "it conducts" layer; moving to "it measures" requires inductance simulation and sensing integration.
Fiber arrays face a process paradigm shift. The optical connector partners TE listed are Senko, US Conec and 3M, with no Taiwanese names. If FusionForge succeeds, FAU manufacturing shifts from manual V-grooves to automated laser welding, and fiber array and passive component makers built on manual assembly need to reassess their equipment and process roadmap.

9. Conclusion

TE's talk had no single headline number, but it set a clear direction: value in the AI rack is moving to the junctions. On the power side, 800V cuts current 16x at the cost of rewriting safety requirements, and connectors must start managing inductance and reporting temperature and leaks. On the optical side, the optical engine moves toward the package, and the passive fiber path turns from an accessory into part of the system architecture.

Over the next 12 months, watch three things: whether the Open Rack 800V busbar interface converges into an OCP specification, when the 1OU rack-to-rack power connection goes from concept to part number, and when FusionForge discloses insertion loss and production throughput.

Copper is Amphenol's battlefield; TE has placed its chips on the junctions of power and light, betting that the harder the junction, the more it is worth.

This article is for technology and industry trend analysis only and does not constitute investment advice.