The Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN Global Forum) expanded its partnership with the Linux Foundation's Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

The updated memorandum of understanding (MoU) sees CNCF's work on composable hardware in disaggregated infrastructure (CoHDI) integrated into the IOWN Global Forum’s all-photonics network (APN).

The sandbox project aims to apply CoHDI as a feature within the data-centric infrastructure (DCI) of the APN software, enabling scale-up/down capabilities for individual Kubernetes nodes within composable and disaggregated environments over optical interconnected computing. This would reportedly complement the existing Kubernetes cluster scale-out/in model while enabling scale-across networking.

According to the IOWN Global Forum, the MoU builds on existing open-source collaborations within the Linux Foundation's Edge and Networking research groups, helping to accelerate the development of the integrated optical network backbone behind the Forum's Vision 2030 Roadmap.

“We are pleased to extend our partnership with the CNCF to help us meet our ambitions to deliver the communications infrastructure of the future,” Katsuhiko Kawazoe, president and chairperson of the IOWN Global Forum, explained. “It is only through global and open collaborative efforts like this that we can achieve a more sustainable, secure, and high-performing network and computing infrastructure to revolutionize our personal lives, workplaces, and society.”

“Integrating CoHDI into the IOWN Global Forum’s APN is the next step in establishing disaggregated AI native infrastructure,” CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk added. “By enabling hardware sharing across optical networks, we’re moving beyond traditional scaling to provide the next generation required for production at scale.”

IOWN-APN is the brainchild of NTT Group and utilizes optics over electricity for data transmission across the network. The concept saw further validation this month from Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telecom, who partnered with Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu's 1Finity networking arm in a venture expanding APN application across Taiwan.