USFP questions

Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable. Cisco and NVIDIA announced it on October 12, 2026 at the OCP Global Summit.

The first design has 16 lanes of 400 Gb/s, which is 6.4 Tb/s each way per module. A 32-lane version reaches 12.8 Tb/s.

No. As of October 2026 there is no published specification, no samples, no prices and no ship dates. No 400G-per-lane switch chip has been announced to use them either.

Not as far as anyone has said. USFP is about the same size as OSFP but uses a new two-dimensional connector, so it needs new cages. Neither Cisco nor NVIDIA claims OSFP compatibility.

The announced ceiling is 100 W of heat per module, without a dedicated cooling circuit inside it. Cisco and NVIDIA also claim about 1.3 times the power efficiency of 200G-per-lane modules, which hasn't been independently measured.

It is meant to be. Cisco and NVIDIA plan to publish it through a community-led multi-source agreement, but that group, its members and its terms haven't been announced.

TE Connectivity and Amphenol are working with Cisco and NVIDIA on cages, connectors and modules. No optical module maker has announced a USFP product yet.

XPO, led by Arista, is a larger liquid-cooled module with 64 lanes of 200G for 12.8T today. USFP is OSFP-sized, uses 16 lanes of 400G for 6.4T, and is meant to work in air-cooled systems too.

No. USFP is a pluggable module in the front panel that can be swapped while the switch runs. Co-packaged optics put the optical engines inside the switch chip's package.

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