Laser Chip Brings Multiplexing to AI Data Centers

As the bandwidth and power demands of AI data centers necessitate a transition from electrical to optical scaleup networking , one component has been conspicuously absent from the co-packaged optics arsenal: the laser itself . That’s no longer the case. Last month, Tower Semiconductor and Scintil Photonics announced production of the world’s first single-chip DWDM light engine for AI infrastructure. DWDM, or dense wavelength division multiplexing, transmits multiple optical signals over a single fiber—greatly reducing power and latency while connecting dozens of GPUs. Matt Crowley, the CEO of Scintil Photonics, says that the idea of multiplexing optically is not new. Indeed, it’s been around as long as the internet itself. In the 1990s, telecom companies buried huge amounts of optical fiber in the streets, assuming that one wavelength per fiber would eventually become the norm. When the telecom industry realized it’s possible to transport tens of wavelengths down a single…