[News] Intel Moves Integrated Photonics Solutions to Data Center AI Division as Part of Restructuring Plan

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While all eyes are on Intel’s restructuring plan, which features the foundry unit’s spin-off and the delay of Germany and Poland factories, there is another critical decision regarding its photonics business.

According to Intel’s announcement, the tech giant is moving Integrated Photonics Solutions (IPS) into its Data Center and Artificial Intelligence division (DCAI), as it tries to drive a more focused R&D plan that’s fully aligned with its top business priorities.

This shuffle seems to be reasonable, as earlier this year, Intel has achieved a milestone in integrated photonics technology for high-speed data transmission, and the two arenas seem to be inseparable.

A few months ago, Intel demonstrated the industry’s most advanced and first-ever fully integrated optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet co-packaged with an Intel CPU and running live data. According to Intel, the OCI chiplet represents a leap forward in high-bandwidth interconnect by enabling co-packaged optical input/output (I/O) in emerging AI infrastructure for data centers and high performance computing (HPC) applications.

A report by Photonics Spectra notes that Intel’s IPS division focuses on technologies such as light generation, amplification, detection, modulation, CMOS interface circuits, and package integration.

Here’s why this technology matters: As chipmakers advance Moore’s Law, increasing transistor density, signal loss during transmission becomes a significant issue because chips use electricity to transmit signals. Silicon photonics technology addresses this problem by using optical signals instead of electrical ones, allowing for high-speed data transmission, greater bandwidth, and faster data processing.

Intel has been developing silicon photonics technology for over 30 years. Since the launch of its silicon photonics platform in 2016, Intel has shipped over 8 million photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and more than 3.2 million integrated on-chip lasers, according to its press release. These products have been adopted by numerous large-scale cloud service providers.

In addition to Intel, rivals such as AMD and TSMC are also accelerating the development of next-generation silicon photonic solution.

Read more

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• [News] TSMC’s Latest Advancements in CFET, 3D Stacking, and Silicon Photonics

(Photo credit: Intel)