Malaga, Spain – September 22, 2026 -- Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and Lightera announced that the Snap-BeamTM Connector has won the Fibre Infrastructure Innovation Award at the ECOC Exhibition Industry Awards 2026, recognizing advances in optical connectivity for co-packaged optics (CPO) systems used in AI and data-center networks.
Snap-Beam Connector enables compact, detachable optical links for photonic integrated circuits
The Snap-Beam Connector provides detachable optical connectivity between photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and optical fibers within CPO systems. It combines expanded-beam optical coupling, magnet-based automatic connection, and reflow compatibility to deliver high-density optical interconnections with low insertion loss.
Technology targets high-density optical I/O for AI infrastructure buildouts
By supporting high-density optical input/output in a compact footprint, the connector is designed to enable practical deployment of next-generation AI infrastructure and high-performance data-center networks that require dense fiber connectivity at the chip level.
Furukawa Electric will demonstrate an 8 x 40-channel gang connector at ECOC 2026
The Snap-Beam Connector is on display at the Lightera booth (1058) during ECOC 2026. Furukawa Electric will present the technology's latest progress during the ECOC 2026 Technical Conference on Thursday, from 11:15 to 11:30 a.m. in Conference Room 2.2. The presentation will introduce an 8 x 40-channel gang connector utilizing Snap-Beam technology, capable of simultaneously connecting 320 optical channels for CPO applications.