GlobalFoundries just announced its acquisition of Advanced Micro Foundry, a Singapore-based silicon photonics maker, a purchase the company says makes it the largest manufacturer of the technology, as reported by Reuters. Silicon photonics uses light instead of electrical pulses to transmit data, and it can be used for communication within chips, between components, and even across servers.
Nvidia is already planning to implement silicon photonics for its next-generation AI servers, which would reduce power consumption while simultaneously increasing data transfer speeds. This is crucial for the company, as it could enable clusters with millions of GPUs within data centers. AMD is also jumping on this technology, reportedly spending nearly $300 million to open a research and development center in Taiwan that focuses on said tech. It acquired Enosemi, another silicon photonics firm, earlier this year, to help compete against Nvidia.
