Marvell pushes GlobalFoundries to light up wafer production

It might be the next trillion-dollar company, but it'll need some help on the supply side to do it

Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that Marvell’s optics tech would make it the next trillion-dollar company. On Thursday, Marvell took a big step towards securing that status by announcing an expanded partnership with GlobalFoundries, an American wafer fab well known for its work in silicon photonics manufacturing.

The tie-up will see GloFo and Marvell work to expand silicon germanium (SiGe) wafer production at the fab’s Burlington, Vermont wafer plant. SiGe is commonly employed in the production of optical transceivers, which convert electrical signals to optical ones and back again, as well as in laser modules used in many high-end switches from Nvidia and others.

According to GlobalFoundries, the additional capacity will support the production of near- and co-packaged optics (CPO/NPO) as well as “next-gen” pluggable optics. 

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Nvidia already employs co-packaged optics in some of its Spectrum Ethernet and Quantum InfiniBand switches to cut power consumption and improve reliability.

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Pundits expect NPO to be used in large multirack systems such as Huawei’s new Ascend 960DT-based SuperPods. Nvidia’s future multi-rack systems are widely expected to use NPO as well.

The fab says its SiGe tech has already been validated up to 200 Gbps per lane, which is required for 1.6 Tbps transceivers. Faster lane speeds could open the door to 3.2 Tbps transceivers, which are also on its roadmap.

Demand for optics technologies has surged thanks in no small part to everyone’s favorite subject: AI. Speaking during Computex this spring, Marvell CEO Matt Murphy explained why demand for optics demand is set to explode.

Up until now, optics have primarily been used to connect racks to resources across the datacenter. Anything within a few meters was well within reach of cheaper and less power hungry copper interconnects. But as lane speeds climbed from 25 Gbps to 50, 100, and then 200 Gbps, copper interconnects began running into practical reach limits. 400 Gbps per lane is essentially the end of the road for copper even in a single rack; beyond that point, copper cables can’t carry signal at speed further than 1.25 meters.

Because of this, the broader ecosystem has been investing heavily to bolster optics and photonics supply chains, and GlobalFoundries isn’t the only one boosting production.

Nvidia in particular has invested billions in the optics technology outfits, including $2 billion each to Lumentum and Coherent. A few months later, Coherent announced plans to boost production of indium phosphide wafers used in lasers, photodetectors, and modulators, at its Sherman, Texas, fab by 4x. ®