GlobalFoundries Acquires Advanced Micro Foundry to Dominate Silicon Photonics Market for AI Data Centers

GlobalFoundries buys silicon photonics firm Advanced Micro Foundry for undisclosed amount -- move makes chipmaker one of the largest silicon photonics manufacturers

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. Silicon photonics' ability to reduce power consumption while increasing data transmission speeds is crucial for the future of AI computing. This is especially true now that the AI data center build-out is straining the electricity grid with the unprecedented increase in power demand. "As data moves faster and workloads grow more complex, the ability to move information with greater speed, precision, and power efficiency is now fundamental to AI data centers and advanced telecom networks," said GlobalFoundries CEO Tim Breen in a statement. Aside from its use with AI, silicon photonics is a pivotal technology in quantum computing. The use of light instead of electrical signals could allow for systems that do not require cryogenic cooling, making quantum computers much more practical and less costly to operate. While big names like AMD, Nvidia, and GlobalFoundries are investing in silicon photonics, other startups are also entering the fray. Firms like Ayar Labs, Celestial AI, and Lightmatter are developing their own technologies and photonic-based chips, especially as it's seen as the future of computing. While we don't expect to see consumer-grade CPUs, GPUs, and motherboards come with this technology anytime soon, it's already being applied to large-scale servers that deal with terabytes of data every second. And with the continued investment in AI data centers, we anticipate that research and development on this promising tech would move forward as well.

GlobalFoundries buys Singapore's Advanced Micro Foundry in push to speed up AI data center networks

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries said on Monday it has acquired Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF), a Singapore-based chipmaker that focuses on silicon photonics, a fast-growing field that is being used in artificial intelligence data centers and quantum computers. GlobalFoundries did not disclose financial details of the deal. Silicon photonics technology can be used to integrate traditional computing chip technologies with optical networking technologies that use pulses of light to transmit data. The field is growing quickly, with Nvidia working with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to package together some of its networking chips with optical connections. A range of well-funded Silicon Valley startups such as Ayar Labs, Celestial AI and Lightmatter are also pursuing the optical connections between chips, some of them using GlobalFoundries as a manufacturer. GlobalFoundries is already a major player in silicon photonics, helping startups such as PsiQuantum, which is constructing a quantum computer in Chicago, build its photonic-based chips. With the acquisition of AMF, GlobalFoundries said it believes it will be the world's largest silicon photonics maker and that it will establish a new research center in Singapore. "As data moves faster and workloads grow more complex, the ability to move information with greater speed, precision and power efficiency is now fundamental to AI data centers and advanced telecom networks," Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries, said in a statement. (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)