Having spent the last two years getting its technology and supplier ducks in a row, co-packaged optics (CPO) startup Ayar Labs now has an announced customer in Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE; see “HPE, Ayar Labs pair to bring optical I/O to HPE Slingshot Ethernet fabric”) and several other active engagements in a variety of applications. That makes 2002 “a year of scale” for Ayar Labs, according to Hugo Saleh, the company’s senior vice president of commercial operations, managing director UK. That scale could include a telecom-related application unrelated to switch chip I/O.
Ayar Labs combines its TeraPHY optical chiplets with its 64-wavelength external SuperNova lasers to offer optical interconnect between chips for high-performance computing and data center applications as well as use in artificial intelligence, machine learning, avionics, and radar systems (see “Ayar Labs partners with GLOBALFOUNDRIES for optical I/O demo, expanded sampling for co-packaged optics”). The company’s technology will support reaches up to 2 km, although most applications currently under discussion only require something in the range of 10s of meters, Saleh says. (Phased array radar systems are an exception, where 100s of meters would be involved, he adds.)
The company is partnered with MACOM and Sivers Semiconductors to receive DFB components for the SuperNova lasers. Ayar Labs and Lumentum also announced a collaboration at OFC 2022 that will see Lumentum produce CW-WDM MSA compliant external laser sources that Ayar Labs (and others) can use as well. The chiplets, meanwhile, will be produced at GlobalFoundries using the fab’s new GF Fotonix monolithic silicon photonics platform. GlobalFoundries is a strategic investor in Ayar Labs as is Hewlett Packard via its Hewlett Packard Pathfinder arm; other investors include Applied Ventures, Blue Sky Capital, Castor Ventures, Downing Ventures, SG Innovate, Founders Fund, Intel Capital, Lockheed Martin, Playground, and Silicon Valley Bank.
With its technology and partners in place, Ayar Labs is now delivering prototypes and development kits. Saleh says that most of their engagements are for chip-to-chip requirements. The support of HPE’s Slingshot Ethernet fabric is the engagement most closely aligned with traditional networking. However, while HPE is developing a switch chip and Saleh says his company will be ready to support datacom switch I/O requirements when CPO is needed, he implies that the company’s attention is mainly elsewhere.
For example, one telecom-related application that holds promise is 5G antennas, he says. The copper interconnect technology now in use creates significant interference issues that require expensive shielding to circumvent. Replacing such traces and related connections with an optical alternative would obviate the need for such shielding, and the lengths of these connections would fit will within the capabilities of Ayar Labs’ CPO technology, Saleh says.
[Editor's Note: This article was updated from the original with a change to Hugo Saleh's title.]
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