With 3nm chiplets, Alphawave Semi has started a connectivity business to capitalize on the growth of silicon photonics in AI data centers.
The first items include active copper cables, 3nm digital signal processors (DSPs), which are known to be good die for PAM4, and the new Coherent-lite modulation for 800G and 1.6T lines.
Apkphawave went from IP to selling silicon devices in 2023, and the optoelectronics products use the company’s WidEye DSP architecture and EyeQ advanced diagnostics technology for PAM4 modulation. This can enable 800G and 1.6T data transfers in AI datacentres on optical fibres or even copper wires.
With data rates of up to 1.6 Tbit/s as 8 x 200G, the Cu-Wave is a PAM4 DSP for Active Electrical Cables (AEC) up to 3 meters long. Up to 40dB of loss (measured bump-bump) can be equalized by the AW200-C on both the host-side and line-side interfaces.
The AW200-C is available as Known Good Die (KGD) and is manufactured in a 3nm CMOS technology node. For 1.6T AEC, Alphawave Semi provides a complete reference design.
With the same characteristics, O-Wave is a 200G PAM4 DSP for gearbox and optical retimer transceivers that can support fiber lines up to 2km.
Coherent-lite DSP for optical transceivers is called Co-Wave. Intensity-modulated direct detection (IM-DD) approaches are typically utilized in datacenter optical interconnects that span a campus of buildings. This modulation scheme seeks to deliver lower power usage.
To fulfill the demands of linking AI machine clusters across data center campuses up to 20 km away, the AW400-O is a latency-optimized coherent-lite DSP that employs DP-QAM16 modulation.
Cost-effective 800G or 1.6Tb capacity O-band coherent-lite optical modules can be implemented with the AW400-O DSP, which also has an integrated, programmable NIST-certified security engine that allows all links between one data center and nearby data centers on campus to be encrypted.
Leadership Comments
“The addition of the Connectivity Products Group is a significant achievement as it allows us to work with any leading hyperscaler in the way they need,” said Tony Pialis, Alphawave Semi CEO. “If they need IP subsystems or chiplets for a bespoke system, we can provide it. If they want us to custom develop a silicon product, we can do that. And now, if they want to purchase a standard connectivity product powered by our leading-edge technologies, we can offer that too. This group is an important strategic asset, and I’m delighted to mark this launch to further Alphawave Semi’s mission as the next semiconductor leader in AI connectivity and compute.”
“The industry is evolving with the rise of purpose-built data center campuses, which have been architected in response to the disruptions catalysed by mass adoption of AI versus traditional compute infrastructure. To meet the challenge, we focused our innovations into PAM4 and pioneered an investment into Coherent-lite DSPs with the aim of becoming a trusted supplier of silicon products into the growing high-speed optoelectronics semiconductor market,” said Babak Samimi, Alphawave Semi SVP & GM of the Connectivity Products Group.
“Our Team has been working diligently to enable Alphawave Semi’s pivot to develop our own connectivity silicon products by leveraging our industry-leading high-speed SerDes, high-precision analog, as well as our expertise in SoC and firmware, signal integrity management, and advanced diagnostics powered by our unique WidEye and EyeQ technologies to help support this data center evolution
“We have been working with a leading North American hyperscaler and number of key ecosystem partners that have developed solutions with our newly revealed connectivity products; and we look forward to deploying these solutions to the market over the next 12 months.”
“With a strong heritage in high-speed SerDes in leading-edge process nodes, this market entry should be highly disruptive and will be beneficial to hyperscalers,” said Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of market research firm LightCounting. “With the trend towards more distributed processing taking place over data centre campuses, the PAM4 and Coherent-lite DSP market is set for continued growth and we forecast it will reach over $4 billion dollars by 2028. Being in a select pool of companies that are currently able to provide both PAM4 and Coherent-lite products, Alphawave is well positioned.”
