Lightmatter, a photonic computing company, today announced a strategic partnership with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), the world's largest provider of semiconductor packaging and test services, to jointly advance Lightmatter's Passage platform. The platform is the world's first 3D stacked photonic engine with pluggable fibers and is designed to address the critical interconnection bottlenecks that current AI workloads have on data center infrastructure. This breakthrough technology will enable data centers to scale at the speed of light, supporting the efficient interconnection of millions of XPUs to meet the growing demands of AI applications.
Solve the connectivity bottlenecks of AI workloads
With the rapid development of next-generation AI models, the expansion of computing infrastructure has become a major challenge for the industry. Meeting the demands of these cutting-edge AI models requires a large number of XPUs (Compute Acceleration Units) that are tightly connected with extremely low latency and extremely high bandwidth. Lightmatter's Passage platform provides an innovative solution that enables direct connectivity of more than 1,000 XPUs within a single domain and delivers tens to hundreds of terabits per second (Tbps) of optical interconnect bandwidth in a single multi-chip package. The application of this technology represents a huge step forward in the field of photonic interconnect, far beyond the current traditional solutions that rely on pluggable optical modules.
ASE's packaging technology accelerates the deployment of the Passage platform
"ASE's unmatched expertise in semiconductor packaging and broad deployment in the industry make it the perfect partner for us to expand the Passage platform," said Ritesh Jain, Senior Vice President of Engineering & Operations at Lightmatter. "This collaboration will enable us to achieve greater breakthroughs in silicon photonic packaging technology to meet the growing demands of high-performance computing and data center applications."
Pictured: Lightmatter and ASE have entered into a strategic partnership to promote the development of 3D photonics
CP Hung, Vice President of R&D at ASE, also said, "We are very pleased to partner with Lightmatter to advance Passage technology. This collaboration is a testament to ASE's capabilities in 3D integration and large-scale packaging to accelerate the go-to-market of innovative solutions that continue to improve the performance of AI silicon chips." ”
The 3D stacked photonic engine delivers a leap in performance
Unlike traditional 2D optical chip solutions, Lightmatter's Passage platform uses a 3D stacked photonic engine that pushes the boundaries of the chip edge. By placing inputs and outputs (I/O) across the entire chip surface, Passage is able to dramatically increase bandwidth while freeing up space at the edge of the chip to support more functional requirements, such as memory expansion. Through its partnership with ASE, Lightmatter is able to deliver a photon-optimized 3D packaging solution that provides customers with unprecedented high-speed connectivity capabilities, rapidly scaling the production and deployment capabilities of state-of-the-art GenAI supercomputing clusters.
Future-proof, large-scale AI data center solutions
The collaboration also addresses the need to integrate pluggable fiber access points directly into optical interconnects for reliable and easy-to-maintain scaling with high-density fiber connectivity. This innovation delivers significant performance and efficiency gains for large-scale applications in AI data centers, enabling the industry to rapidly scale large-scale computing infrastructure to meet the huge demands of AI and machine learning workloads.
This collaboration between Lightmatter and ASE is not only a reflection of technological innovation, but also an important step in driving the development of future AI computing infrastructure. With the continuous evolution of the Passage platform, the scale, performance, and reliability of AI supercomputing clusters will usher in a qualitative leap, further promoting the development of global data centers in a more intelligent and efficient direction.
