en.Wedoany.com Reported - Tower Semiconductor and Marvell jointly announced that shipments of their coherent photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have surpassed 5 million units. This milestone marks significant progress in the deployment of silicon photonics technology in AI-driven data center interconnect (DCI) networks. These devices are specifically designed to support high-bandwidth optical connections between data centers, aiming to address the network traffic growth driven by AI workloads while enhancing performance and energy efficiency.
These coherent PICs are manufactured on Tower's silicon photonics platform and used in advanced coherent optical transceivers. Unlike direct detection optical devices, coherent PICs require precise control of light phase and polarization, making their design and manufacturing processes more complex. This technology is becoming increasingly important for "scale-out" AI architectures that connect clusters, campuses, and geographically distributed AI infrastructure. Tower and Marvell stated that their collaboration has extended from manufacturing to the development of next-generation photonics technologies, encompassing non-silicon material integration, 3D integration of photonics and electronics, and advanced optical packaging techniques such as V-groove structures. These technologies are designed to support future generations of coherent optical modules, providing higher capacity and energy efficiency for AI data center networks.
Dr. Radha Nagarajan, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Optical Engineering at Marvell, expressed the company's anticipation of continuing collaboration with the Tower team to advance next-generation coherent technologies for scale-out data center architectures, delivering efficient and high-performance photonics support for customers' advanced AI workloads. This shipment data vividly demonstrates the rapid migration of coherent optics from long-haul telecommunications applications to cloud and AI infrastructure. As hyperscale operators build increasingly distributed AI clusters, the industry is transitioning toward "scale-out" architectures, which require high-capacity optical interconnects between data centers, AI campuses, and regional computing facilities, thereby driving demand for coherent pluggable optical modules and the underlying photonic integrated circuits. The announcement also highlights the growing strategic importance of the foundry ecosystem in the silicon photonics field. Marvell provides coherent DSP and optical subsystem technologies, while manufacturing partners such as Tower play a critical role in delivering the silicon photonics platforms required for mass production.
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