The Active Copper Cable Multi-Source Agreement (ACC-MSA) completed its first industry interoperability plugfest, demonstrating multi-vendor operation of linear active copper cables (ACCs) at 200 Gbps per lane. Announced at OCP Global Summit 2026 in San Jose, the event brought together nine participating companies spanning cable manufacturing, semiconductor technology, networking switches and test equipment.

Co-chaired by MACOM and Semtech, the ACC-MSA develops specifications to enable linear equalizer-based active copper cables to operate across equipment from different manufacturers. Unlike retimed active electrical cables (AECs), which use DSP-based signal recovery and regeneration, linear ACCs employ analog equalization to compensate for channel losses without full signal retiming. The approach can reduce power, latency and cost for suitable short-reach links. At 200 Gbps per lane, eight lanes support 1.6 Tbps per direction.

The consortium announced seven additional members: Accton, ACES, Foxconn Interconnect Technologies (FIT), Lintes, Marvell, TeraSignal and Zhaolong Interconnect. Founding members include AMD, Amphenol, Broadcom, Celestica, Ciena, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google, HPE, Keysight Technologies, Luxshare Technologies, MACOM, Molex, MultiLane, NVIDIA, Semtech and TE Connectivity.

Key Developments

“The successful completion of our first plug fest represents a major milestone for the ACC-MSA and the broader industry,” said Marek Tlalka, ACC-MSA Co-Chair and Vice President, High Performance Connectivity Product Marketing at MACOM.

Analysis:

The interoperability demonstration addresses a practical challenge for next-generation AI infrastructure: maintaining low-power, high-bandwidth electrical connectivity as signaling speeds increase to 200 Gbps per lane. Passive copper cables face growing insertion-loss and signal-integrity constraints at these rates. Linear ACCs can extend usable copper reach through analog equalization while avoiding the additional power and latency of full DSP retiming. These links are particularly relevant within racks and between nearby racks, depending on the system architecture and cable reach.

MACOM, Semtech, Marvell and other vendors are developing high-speed signal-conditioning components for copper interconnects. The plugfest shifts attention from individual component capabilities to interoperability across cables, switch ports, semiconductor devices and test platforms. The announcement does not identify the nine participants or disclose cable lengths, bit-error-rate results or measured power savings. These will be useful criteria for evaluating production deployment readiness.

Company Profile: ACC-MSA