Ayar Labs and AIchip collaborate on CPO for AI infrastructure
The companies plan to implement Ayar Labs’ optical I/O technology into AIchip’s high-performance ASICs, as well as harnessing TSMC’s advanced packaging and process technologies, to address critical bottlenecks in datacentres
Ayar Labs, a company focusing on co-packaged optics (CPO) for large-scale AI workloads, and Alchip Technologies, a provider of chip design and production services, have announced a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating AI scale-up infrastructure. The collaboration seeks to fulfil hyperscaler demands for advanced AI accelerators and platforms that deliver enhanced performance, efficiency, and scalability.
The companies say this new partnership brings together Ayar Labs’ CPO technology, Alchip’s advanced packaging expertise, and TSMC’s advanced packaging and process technologies to build a robust ecosystem and accelerate the production and adoption of optical engines.
“Ayar Labs’ co-packaged optics technology unlocks the next era of AI infrastructure by removing the limitations of copper interconnects,” said Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. “By combining our optical I/O innovation with Alchip’s deep expertise in advanced packaging, we’re building an ecosystem to accelerate the transition to power-efficient, high-performance AI systems.”
As traditional copper-based interconnects struggle to keep pace with AI workloads, this partnership’s goal is to help overcome legacy performance bottlenecks to enable multi-rack scale-up system architectures by implementing Ayar Labs’ optical I/O technology into Alchip’s high-performance ASICs. According to the companies, this unlocks high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity for extended memory and computing resources across larger systems and datacentres, significantly improving interactivity while reducing power consumption.
“Current and future AI workloads require innovative and often collaborative advanced packaging design expertise and production-ready solutions,” said Johnny Shen, chairman and CEO of Alchip Technologies. “Alchip has proven to the market that it has the entire skill set to serve tier 1 hyperscale customers. We’re working with Ayar Labs to bring leading-edge optical I/O technology to demanding high-performance next-gen designs, helping hyperscalers achieve new levels of data throughput and energy efficiency.”
Using TSMC’s packaging and silicon technologies, including COUPE, TSMC-SoIC, and advanced process nodes, Ayar Labs and Alchip say they are addressing critical data movement bottlenecks and enabling new system architectures. The target result is a scalable, repeatable path for next-generation AI infrastructure CPO adoption.
