Nvidia-backed Scintil Photonics begins shipping laser chips to solve AI data center bottleneck

Nvidia-backed startup Scintil Photonics starts testing laser chips with customers

SAN FRANCISCO, March 11 (Reuters) - Scintil Photonics, a French startup backed by Nvidia, on Wednesday said it has started providing laser chips to customers for testing. Scintil is one of a number of startups working out how to move information around inside artificial intelligence servers such as those made by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab using pulses of light rather than electrical signals, a move that could ease the task of linking many chips together to form one large computer. Analysts expect Nvidia to reveal more about ⁠its plans for the technology, called co-packaged optics, at its developer conference in Silicon Valley next week. All optical systems rely on a laser chip to generate the beams of light that will carry information, and those chips, made with a special material called indium phosphide and mostly used in long-distance communications networks, are not currently made in large enough volumes to meet the demand from AI data centers. That supply dynamic drove Nvidia earlier this month to invest $2 billion each in two of the ⁠largest makers of those lasers, Lumentum (LITE.O), opens new tab and Coherent (COHR.N), opens new tab. Scintil, which secured funding from Nvidia in a $58 million funding round last year, has come up with a way to package indium phosphide lasers with some of the other elements needed for optical communications into a single ⁠chip, working with Israel-based Tower Semiconductor (TSEM.TA), opens new tab as a manufacturing partner. Matt Crowley, Scintil's CEO, said the company is in discussions with "six companies, seven companies" that want to use its technology by ⁠2028 but declined to name them, citing nondisclosure agreements. He said Scintil's goal is to be able to produce hundreds of thousands of chips per month ⁠by then. "The way we make it is fundamentally different," Crowley said in an interview. "We can mass produce them ... and we can satisfy a big chunk of the market." Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Nvidia-backed Scintil Photonics begins shipping AI laser chips

Scintil Photonics, a French startup backed by Nvidia, has begun providing laser chips to customers for testing. The company is developing optical technology to move data using light instead of electrical signals, aiming to ease linking many chips together in AI servers. Analysts expect Nvidia to reveal more about its co-packaged optics plans at its developer conference in Silicon Valley next week. The development addresses a critical supply constraint in the AI hardware market. Laser chips made with indium phosphide are currently not produced in large enough volumes to meet data center demand. Nvidia invested $2 billion each in laser makers Lumentum and Coherent earlier this month to address this shortage. Scintil secured funding from Nvidia in a $58 million funding round last year. The company partnered with Israel-based Tower Semiconductor to package indium phosphide lasers with other optical communication elements into a single chip. This integration aims to simplify the manufacturing process for AI server components. Scintil's CEO Matt Crowley said the company is in discussions with six to seven companies that want to use its technology by 2028. Crowley stated that Scintil aims to produce hundreds of thousands of chips per month by that year. He declined to name the potential customers, citing nondisclosure agreements. Crowley said the company's manufacturing method is fundamentally different from existing approaches. He stated that Scintil can mass produce the chips and satisfy a big chunk of the market demand.

Nvidia-backed startup Scintil Photonics starts testing laser chips with customers

Scintil Photonics, a French startup backed by Nvidia, on Wednesday said it has started providing laser chips to customers for testing. Scintil is one of a number of startups working out how to move information around inside artificial intelligence servers such as those made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices using pulses ⁠of ⁠light rather than electrical signals, a move that could ease the task of linking many chips together to form one large computer. Analysts expect Nvidia to reveal more about its plans for the technology, called co-packaged optics, at its developer conference in Silicon Valley next week. All optical systems rely on a laser chip to generate the beams of light that ⁠will carry information, and those chips, made with a special material called indium phosphide and mostly used in long-distance communications networks, are ⁠not currently made in large enough volumes to meet the demand from AI data centers. That supply dynamic drove Nvidia earlier this month to invest $2 billion each in two of the largest makers of those lasers, Lumentum and Coherent. Scintil, which secured funding from Nvidia in a $58 million funding round last year, has come up with a way to package indium phosphide lasers with some of the other elements needed for optical communications into a single chip, working with Israel-based Tower Semiconductor as a manufacturing partner. Matt Crowley, Scintil's CEO, said ⁠the company is in discussions with "six companies, seven companies" that want to use its technology by 2028 but declined to name them, citing nondisclosure agreements. He said Scintil's goal is to be able to produce hundreds of thousands of chips per month by then. "The way we make it is fundamentally different," Crowley said in an interview. "We can mass produce them ... and we can satisfy a big chunk of the market."