ST’s SiPho technology combined with the ST BiCMOS technology are a unique 300mm silicon platform to serve the optical market.
The latest generation of STMicroelectronics’ proprirtary technologies for enhanced optical interconnect performance in datacenters and AI clusters are being unveiled.
AI processing demands are growing at an exponential rate, which creates performance and energy efficiency issues with computation, memory, power supplies, and the connections between them.
With next-generation BiCMOS technologies and new silicon photonics, which are expected to ramp up starting in the second half of 2025 for 800Gb/s and 1.6Tb/s optical modules, ST is assisting hyperscalers and the industry’s top supplier of optical modules in overcoming such obstacles.
Thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of optical transceivers are at the core of a datacenter’s interconnections.
To enable data transfer between graphics processing unit (GPU) computational resources, switches, and storage, these devices transform optical signals into electrical signals and vice versa.
Customers will be able to integrate multiple complex components into a single chip thanks to ST’s new, proprietary silicon photonics (SiPho) technology inside these transceivers. Additionally, ST’s next-generation, proprietary BiCMOS technology offers ultra high-speed and low power optical connectivity, both of which are essential for maintaining the growth of AI.
ST’s SiPho technology combined with the ST BiCMOS technology are a unique 300mm silicon platform to serve the optical market.
Both technologies are being industrialized and will be manufactured in ST’s Crolles (France/Europe) 300mm fab.
Leadership Comments
“AI demand is accelerating the adoption of high-speed communication technology within the datacenter ecosystem. This is the right time for ST to introduce new power efficient silicon photonics technology and complementing it with a new generation of BiCMOS for our customers to design the next wave of optical interconnect products, which will enable 800Gbps/1.6Tbps solutions for the hyperscalers,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, President, Microcontrollers, Digital ICs and RF products Group at STMicroelectronics.”
“Both technologies will be manufactured on 300mm processes in Europe, bringing customers an independent high-volume supply for two key components of their optical module development strategy. Today’s announcement represents the first step for our PIC product-family and, thanks to close collaboration with key partners across the entire value chain, our ambition is to become a key supplier of silicon photonics and BiCMOS wafers for the datacenter and AI cluster market, be it pluggable optics today or optical I/O tomorrow, added Remi.”
Testimonials
“AWS is pleased to collaborate with STMicroelectronics to develop a new silicon photonics technology (SiPho), PIC100, that will enable interconnection between any workload including Artificial Intelligence (AI). AWS is working with STMicroelectronics based on their demonstrated capability to make PIC100 a leading SiPho technology for the optical and AI market. We are enthusiastic about the potential innovations this will unlock for SiPho,” said Nafea Bshara, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services.
“The Pluggable Optics for Data Center Market is experiencing significant growth, valued at $7 billion in 2024,” said Dr. Vladimir Kozlov, CEO and Chief Analyst at LightCounting. “This market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23% during 2025—2030 to exceed $24 billion at the end of this period. Market share of transceivers based on silicon photonics modulators will increase from 30% in 2024 to 60% by 2030.”
Additional Technical Info is available at ST.com on BiCMOS technology and Silicon Photonics.
