GlobalFoundries and Marvell Technology are expanding a multi-year agreement to raise capacity for GF’s silicon germanium, or SiGe, technology at GF’s Burlington, Vermont facility. The additional output is intended to support growing demand for next-generation optical connectivity as AIartificial intelligence data centers scale and the pressure on high-speed interconnects increases.
The collaboration centers on SiGe used in pluggable optical transceivers as well as Near-Packaged Optics and Co-packaged Optics. According to GF, the platform provides the high-frequency performance, signal integrity and power efficiency needed for advanced optical networking applications. The company says its current technology already supports 200G-per-lane optical connectivity and that the roadmap extends toward higher-speed generations.
GF also says it has been manufacturing advanced SiGe for more than a decade and continues to co-integrate SiGe, silicon photonics and advanced packaging for new optical connectivity architectures. That combination is positioned for NPO and CPOco-packaged opticsOptical devices and CPUs are integrated into a single package, where optical functions move closer to the compute hardware to reduce interconnect bottlenecks.
The new agreement builds on existing production and is meant to add significant capacity for Marvell’s requirements. Both companies frame the move as part of a longer-running partnership focused on optical networking technologies for AIartificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure, with Marvell emphasizing its investment in higher-bandwidth optical architectures and GF pointing to continued roadmap and manufacturing investment.