An industry group was launched yesterday seeking to develop new standards allowing manufacturers to relocate optical modules from the faceplate to inside networking equipment. The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) has among its headline co-founders names that include Cisco, Dell, Intel, Juniper Networks, and Microsoft.

Members of COBO will work together to develop specifications and technology roadmaps for on-board optical modules. “The consortium will immediately begin collaborating on a set of industry standards that define electrical interfaces, management interfaces, thermal requirements and pinouts to permit the development of interchangeable and interoperable optical modules that can be mounted or socketed on a network switch or adapter motherboard,” the group said in an release announcing its formation.

The aim here, COBO explained, is developing optical modules that can be placed closer to network integrated circuits. The group predicts this will “decrease the power required to interface to the modules while also increasing faceplate bandwidth density and airflow.”

Other founding members of COBO include Arista Networks, Broadcom, Coriant, Finisar, Inphi, JDSU, Luxtera, Mellanox Technologies, Oclaro, RANOVUS, Source Photonics, and TE Connectivity.

“The founding companies of the Consortium for On-Board Optics are taking a major step forward in improving the efficiency of optical interconnects in data center networks,” said Brad Booth, COBO Chair and principal architect, Microsoft Azure Global Networking Services. “With ever-increasing data rates, the ability to move the optical modules closer to the network silicon provides a real economic and environmental benefit.”

In a whitepaper highlighting data center energy consumption, COBO co-founder TE Connectivity noted that networking equipment accounts for 50% of a data center’s typical power consumption, followed by air movement and cooling equipment (37%), and transformers and uninterruptible power supplies (10%). It means that networking equipment accounts for half of what it estimates is the 300 billion watts used by data centers each year worldwide.

“Dell is pleased to be a founding member of this consortium to help define open standards for on-board optics. This will set the stage for interchangeable, multi-party solutions that combine the flexibility offered by pluggable modules with improved face-plate density to meet the growing demands of next-generation data centers,” said Subi Krishnamurthy, CTO, Dell Networking, in a press statement. “The Consortium for On-Board Optics is an important step in the right direction to continue driving efficiency into data center systems and deployments.”