Jabil Inc. is a leading global provider of design, manufacturing, and supply chain solutions. Recently, the company announced that it will continue to invest in silicon photonics technology to meet the growing demand of hyperscalers for next-generation cloud computing and AI data centers. The company plans to roll out additional capabilities at its facility in Ottawa, Canada, in the fourth quarter of 2024 to support customers' new advanced photonic packaging products and support customers' advanced photonic packaging new product introduction NPIs. NPI is an abbreviation for "New Product Introduction", which refers to the entire process of bringing a new product from the concept stage to the market. This includes the design, development, testing, and final mass production of products to ensure that new products can be brought to market smoothly and meet market demand.
The new product line will feature innovative features that will help photonics customers quickly transition from proof-of-concept to high-volume production, including fluxless flip chip, fiber optic connectivity, precision die bonding, and wire bonding. These technological advancements will enhance the packaging capabilities of silicon photonic chips, especially in high-speed connectivity applications such as co-packaged optics (CPO) and high-speed on-board connectivity. With Jabil's expertise, customers will be able to enjoy higher performance and reliability of photonics solutions, increasing operational flexibility and scalability.
Silicon photonics technology is critical to data centers, delivering significant performance gains and energy reductions by delivering higher transfer rates, lower power consumption, increased integration, and optimized interconnects.
Pictured: Jabil continues to bet on silicon photonics technology (Source: Jabil)
Matt Crowley, Executive Vice President, Global Business Units, said: "The expansion of the Ottawa facility is critical to Jabil. The facility will enable us to meet the demand for advanced photonic solutions for AI and next-generation data centers. Through our new product introduction capabilities, we can assist our customers with product development, significantly reducing the costly trial and error costs required to develop solutions from scratch.”
Jabil will also continue to drive innovative "silicon-to-solution" manufacturing models to improve the scalability of photonics today and in the future, including 800G and 1.6T. At the same time, the company is also investing in next-generation silicon photonics technologies for 800G and above 1.6T to support artificial intelligence and cloud computing, with a focus on optimizing the performance of modern data centers and reducing energy consumption.
In addition, Jabil announced that it will take over the production and sales of Intel's current line of silicon photonic pluggable optical transceivers ("modules"), as well as the development of future generations of modules. This collaboration better positions Jabil to meet the needs of customers in the data center industry, including hyperscale, next-generation cloud, and AI cloud data centers. These complex environments present unique challenges that Jabil is committed to addressing head-on and providing innovative solutions to support the evolving needs of the data center ecosystem.
It is reported that Jabil, through its photonics business unit, provides customers with complete photonic capabilities, including component design, system assembly, and simplified supply chain management, enabling organizations to reduce the complexity of developing and deploying enhanced optical network solutions. Jabil's "design-to-dust ™" capabilities continue to resonate with customers, and the company is investing in data center infrastructure services, liquid cooling, and silicon photonics to help customers solve the challenges they face.
