Inside optical and the battle for scale – how the AI industry is racing to integrate photonic interconnects

AI infrastructure is moving from copper networking to optical interconnects as GPU clusters outgrow bandwidth, latency, distance and power limits.

The roadmap runs from pluggable transceivers to near-package optics, then co-packaged optics, and eventually optics integrated beneath the chip.

Lightmatter, Nvidia, TSMC, GlobalFoundries and hyperscalers are competing to shape the next standard for AI data center networking.

Photonic interconnects could be a key enabler of larger, faster and more energy-efficient AI systems.