GlobalFoundries and Marvell are scaling up silicon photonics efforts as data centers outgrow copper wiring

AI's data problem isn't compute anymore, it's how fast bits can move between chips

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Lightning Fast: Modern and upcoming data center projects require massive amounts of AI accelerators, and produce similarly massive amounts of data. Traditional silicon-based networking is starting to choke on gigabytes, which is why major manufacturers are now focusing on more advanced technology solutions to move all those bits around.

GlobalFoundries and Marvell Technology have announced an expanded partnership in manufacturing novel connectivity solutions. The multi-year agreement centers on GlobalFoundries' silicon germanium (SiGe) technology, with the company increasing production capacity at its Burlington, Vermont plant.

SiGe-based solutions are used in high-performance connectivity products, including pluggable optical transceivers, Near-Packaged Optics (NPO), and Co-packaged Optics (CPO). As GlobalFoundries highlights in its announcement, these silicon photonics solutions are becoming increasingly important for AI data centers and other massively packed data-crunching infrastructure.

AI systems are growing in scale, which means they require faster accelerators exchanging data through high-speed interconnects. GlobalFoundries already offers a portfolio of SiGe, high-frequency connectivity solutions capable of reaching 200 Gbps per optical lane.

GF said it has manufactured advanced SiGe technology for over a decade, and keeps investing in the co-integration of SiGe, silicon photonics, and advanced packaging solutions for new optical connectivity architectures such as NPO and CPO.

While GlobalFoundries ramps up production, Marvell is looking ahead to its own business prospects. The fabless chip manufacturer has seen its valuation explode thanks to the AI boom, and is expected to play a major role in the future of AI data centers and AI growth at scale.

Nvidia has significantly invested in Marvell as part of a broader partnership that includes silicon photonics and next-gen data center collaboration, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said he expects Marvell to become the next trillion-dollar company on Wall Street.

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According to Robb Johnson, Marvell's VP of foundry technology, the industry is moving toward higher-bandwidth optical architectures for data centers' connectivity fabric, and Marvell is aggressively ramping up investment to lead that transition. Thanks to the expanded cooperation with GlobalFoundries, the Santa Clara-based company will have access to all the SiGe chips and transceivers it needs. The two companies have been working together on optical networking technology for over a decade now.

In "traditional" data centers, optics have mostly been used to connect racks and other crucial computing resources across the plants. Cheaper copper-based interconnects are still tasked with moving data at shorter distances, but the technology is approaching its practical limit at 400 Gbps per lane.

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