OCP Solidifies Role as Catalyst for Next-Gen AI Data Centers and Infrastructure

As the data center industry contends with the skyrocketing demands of generative AI, the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) is moving aggressively to position itself as the unifying force for scalable, efficient, and open AI infrastructure. In a pair of closely timed announcements emanating from the 2025 OCP EMEA Summit in Dublin, OCP has unveiled new tools, partnerships, and initiatives that underscore its central role in standardizing the design of next-generation AI clusters.

The announcements—centered on the debut of an AI-focused portal within the OCP Marketplace and a strategic collaboration with the UALink Consortium—demonstrate OCP’s intent to accelerate the maturation of an AI-capable data center ecosystem. These developments are particularly timely as hyperscale operators grapple with increasingly complex hardware stacks, power and cooling constraints, and a fragmented vendor landscape.

A One-Stop Portal for AI Cluster Builders

OCP’s newly launched AI Portal aims to become the single destination for designers and builders of AI clusters. Housed within the OCP Marketplace, the portal aggregates infrastructure components, reference designs, white papers, and best practices specifically curated for AI workloads.

The marketplace already features offerings from multiple vendors, making it a functional resource from day one.

“The AI portal is a crucial step toward unifying fragmented AI infrastructure efforts,” said George Tchaparian, CEO of the Open Compute Project Foundation. “It offers a centralized hub for open innovation as we shift from siloed first-generation deployments to collaborative, standards-driven architectures.”

That shift is urgently needed. The first wave of AI data centers—many of which are currently under deployment—were often designed hastily, with limited coordination between vendors. The result: higher costs, inconsistent rack formats, and limited interoperability. OCP is betting that a community-led approach to standardization can compress deployment cycles and enable scale without sacrificing performance or sustainability.

"This site will become the one location for AI cluster designers and builders to find the latest available AI infrastructure products," said OCP's Tchaparian in Dublin. "It’s about bringing clarity, consistency, and community to a market moving at breakneck speed."

Tackling the 1-Megawatt Rack Challenge

OCP’s Open Systems for AI Strategic Initiative, launched in early 2024, is at the heart of this effort. It addresses AI’s distinct demands across four interdependent domains: compute density, power delivery, thermal management, and interconnect scalability. New challenges abound in these domains, including support for racks drawing up to 1MW, managing liquid-cooled nodes, and integrating evolving scale-up and scale-out interconnects.

To guide this effort, the initiative has released its Blueprint for Scalable AI Infrastructure and hosted dedicated workshops focused on AI physical infrastructure. These materials are designed to help the OCP Community—now comprising over 400 corporate members and 6,000 engineers—navigate the increasing complexity of AI data center builds.

A highlight of the Dublin event was the announcement of Meta's contribution of its Catalina AI Compute Shelf to the OCP community. Designed to support NVIDIA’s GB200 platform, Catalina represents a reference design for dense AI deployments. It is built on the OCP ORv3 rack standard and supports up to 140 kW per shelf, incorporating Meta’s Wedge fabric switches to enable the NVIDIA NVL72 architecture.

This contribution complements a prior donation from NVIDIA of its MGX-based GB200-NVL72 Platform, which includes a reinforced ORv3 rack system and 1RU liquid-cooled compute and switch trays. Together, these contributions set a powerful precedent for AI hardware standardization at the rack level, facilitating a more interoperable and vendor-neutral supply chain.

Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Infrastructure at IDC, noted the significance of these shared designs: "The AI-capable data center buildout is now in its third year. First-generation systems were built quickly, often in silos, leading to fragmentation and inefficiency. OCP is now uniquely positioned to coordinate industry consensus and drive standardization that accelerates next-gen deployments."

As they're engaged in the AI Strategic Initiative, the OCP community is focused on three pillars:

Standardizing hardware fundamentals, including silicon, power architectures, cooling technologies, and interconnect protocols.
Supporting the full stack of open systems development, enabling composable, interoperable, and sustainable architectures.
Providing structured education and community engagement through events, workshops, and a growing technical curriculum via the OCP Academy.

Tchaparian reinforced that AI is now the dominant driver of innovation in the data center. "As AI and HPC continue to redefine computing requirements, OCP's role in fostering development of open, sustainable, and scalable infrastructure is increasingly vital to meeting demand while managing environmental impact," he said.

Standardizing Interconnects: The UALink Alliance

One of the most technically impactful announcements in Dublin was the new collaboration between OCP and the UALink Consortium, a group formed in October 2024 to define an open, high-speed interconnect standard for accelerated compute clusters. Members of the consortium include tech heavyweights such as AMD, AWS, Google, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft.

The collaboration is aimed at addressing one of the thorniest bottlenecks in AI infrastructure: scale-up interconnect. As large AI models increasingly demand tight coupling of accelerators across systems, traditional interconnects struggle to deliver the required bandwidth and latency. UALink’s open specification is designed specifically to meet these needs.

"The alliance between OCP and UALink creates a powerful collaborative framework to develop and integrate advanced interconnect solutions," said Sameh Boujelbene, VP at Dell'Oro Group. "This is a foundational step in addressing the compute fabric limitations for massive AI and HPC workloads."

Following the release of the UALink 1.0 Specification, the two organizations will work together across OCP’s Open Systems for AI Strategic Initiative and its Future Technologies Initiative Short-Reach Optical Interconnect workstream. The goal is to ensure UALink can be rapidly adopted into real-world AI cluster deployments designed under the OCP umbrella.

Peter Onufryk, UALink Consortium President, highlighted the strategic alignment: "Partnering with the OCP Community will accelerate the adoption of UALink's innovations into complete systems, delivering transformative performance for AI markets."

Toward a Unified, Sustainable Future

What OCP is now building is more than a portfolio of specifications—it’s a platform for convergence. With AI, HPC, and edge computing increasingly intertwined, OCP sees its role as architect and convener of a multi-vendor, multi-domain ecosystem that can keep pace with relentless innovation while promoting sustainability.

“This is the right moment for OCP to step forward,” said IDC's Nadkarni. “We’re in the third year of large-scale AI deployments, and the first-generation designs—built quickly and in isolation—are already showing their limitations. A community-led approach can correct course, reduce fragmentation, and provide a more durable foundation for the next wave of growth.”

OCP’s educational efforts are also ramping up. The OCP Academy, ongoing technical workshop series, and upcoming regional events—including OCP Canada Tech Day, OCP Southeast Asia Tech Day, OCP APAC Summit, and the 2025 OCP Global Summit—will spotlight emerging contributions and provide a forum for open collaboration.

The Long Game

Founded to bring hyperscale design principles to the broader IT ecosystem, the Open Compute Project has matured into a critical platform for cooperative innovation. In the AI era, where infrastructure demands are increasing exponentially and sustainability concerns are paramount, the role of open collaboration has never been more important.

OCP's tenets—openness, scale, efficiency, impact, and sustainability—are well aligned with the evolving requirements of modern compute environments. By focusing on open system-level solutions and drawing contributions from hyperscalers, OEMs, and startups alike, OCP is creating a de facto framework for the future of AI-capable data centers.

"The velocity of AI innovation is staggering," said Tchaparian. "If we continue building in isolation, we’ll hit roadblocks in cost, sustainability, and interoperability. OCP’s collaborative model ensures the industry can innovate together, faster."

With its AI portal live, new hardware contributions rolling in, and a robust roadmap of technical engagement, OCP is well on its way to becoming the backbone of the next wave of AI infrastructure.

At Data Center Frontier, we talk the industry talk and walk the industry walk. In that spirit, DCF Staff members may occasionally use AI tools to assist with content. Parts of this article were created with help from OpenAI's GPT4.

Keep pace with the fast-moving world of data centers and cloud computing by connecting with Data Center Frontier on LinkedIn, following us on X/Twitter and Facebook, as well as on BlueSky, and signing up for our weekly newsletters using the form below.