Tower Semiconductor and Innolight are advancing Near-Package Optics (NPO) for AI infrastructure, with Innolight's first device entering early production. The device uses Tower's PH18M Silicon Photonics process flow at Tower's US CA factory.
Innolight has also taped out multiple NPO products on Tower's 300mm Silicon Photonics platform for future product generations. The collaboration uses Tower's high-volume 200mm and 300mm Silicon Photonics manufacturing platforms.
The companies describe NPO architectures as an emerging approach for next-generation optical interconnects as AI workloads scale. They expect the architectures to drive demand beyond the pluggable optical module market and support a new phase of optical interconnect solutions for AI and cloud infrastructure.
NPO architectures often integrate 16 or more optical channels on a single device, compared with conventional pluggable optical modules. Tower says its platforms provide the process uniformity, yield performance and device offerings needed for these designs. The platforms also support monolithic integration of photonic functions, including wavelength division multiplexing and demultiplexing on a single chip, for increased functionality in a compact size.
Dr. Marco Racanelli, president of Tower Semiconductor, said Innolight is a critical technology partner for Tower's silicon photonics roadmap and a manufacturing customer across four Tower facilities: two in the US, in Newport Beach, California, and San Antonio, Texas, and one each in Israel and Japan.
