Overseas technology giants attack silicon photonics technology - Xunshi Optical Communication Network (iccsz.com)

 Date:2024/2/19 14:10:35 Editor:iccsz

Abstract:With the rapid development of AI, silicon photonics technology has gradually expanded from communication to computing infrastructure and downstream applications, including chip-to-board optical interconnection, chiplet optical interconnection, optical computing, and lidar. The significant increase in the number of parameters of multi-modal large models has led to the explosion of data transmission requirements, and the transmission bandwidth of data between GPUs and Switches, as well as between GPUs and HBM, has increasingly become a bottleneck for the entire system. The silicon photonics engine greatly improves the transmission bandwidth, which is one of the best optical I/O product forms at present, and it is imperative to "light into copper and retreat" in the field of chip interconnection, and silicon photonics ushers in a golden development opportunity.

ICC News The world's heavyweight technology manufacturers are attacking silicon photonics technology. According to media reports, the Japanese government will provide about 45 billion yen to support Intel, SK hynix and Japan's NTT to cooperate in the development of next-generation silicon photonics technology; according to the supply chain, TSMC has invested hundreds of R&D teams to work with major international customers to jointly develop silicon photonics technology, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2024 and enter mass production in 2025. In terms of A-shares, Borche Technology, which docked with Intel for 800G silicon photonics solutions, closed up more than 10% on the last trading day before the Spring Festival (the first trading day after the Spring Festival - February 19, it rose 13%), and Yuanjie Technology, a 100mW high-power silicon photonics laser development project under development, rose more than 13% (the first trading day after the New Year - February 19 ushered in the daily limit).

With the rapid development of AI, silicon photonics technology has gradually expanded from communication to computing infrastructure and downstream applications, including chip-to-board optical interconnection, intra-chip chiplet optical interconnection, optical computing, and lidar. Liu Yongxu et al. of China Securities Securities said in a research report on December 29, 2023 that the significant increase in the number of parameters of multimodal large models has led to an explosion of data transmission demand, and the transmission bandwidth of data between GPU and Switch and between GPU and HBM has increasingly become a bottleneck for the entire system. The silicon photonics engine greatly improves the transmission bandwidth, which is one of the best optical I/O product forms at present, and it is imperative to "light into copper and retreat" in the field of chip interconnection, and silicon photonics ushers in a golden development opportunity.

According to Yole's data, the CAGR of the market size of silicon photonic chips from 2022 to 2028 will reach 44%, of which Datacom optical modules account for more than 90% of the silicon photonic chip market, which is the main application scenario. Compared with traditional optical modules, when upgrading from 400G to 800G and 1.6T, the number of channels in the mainstream solution is upgraded from four channels to eight channels, and the manufacturing process steps are greatly increased, while silicon photonics chips only need to design four more channels, with less process changes and lower costs.

Intel has launched Stratix, a commercial FPGA product with optical interconnect technology 10, as well as pan-processor XPU products with silicon photonics interconnection technology. Companies represented by Lightmatter and Lightelligence have launched new silicon photonic computing chips, such as Envise chips, whose performance far exceeds that of current AI computing chips. For example, when running a BERT natural language model, Envise is five times faster than NVIDIA chips and consumes only one-sixth of the power.

The upstream of the silicon photonics technology industry chain includes optical chip design, SOI substrates, epitaxial wafers and foundries, the midstream is optical module manufacturers, and the downstream is divided into the field of data communication and telecommunications. Vendors such as Intel, Zhongji InnoLight, Coherent, Cisco, and Marvell have both PIC design and module integration capabilities, and maintain close cooperation with downstream cloud vendors and giant customers such as AI, which has significant advantages and a leading role in the supply chain.

From the perspective of the market competition pattern of silicon photonics modules, the market share of Cisco and Intel is far ahead of other manufacturers. In 2022, the market size of optical transceiver telecommunications will be 1.2 billion US dollars, with Cisco accounting for 49% and Lumentum accounting for 30%, and the market size of data communication will be 510 million US dollars, with Intel accounting for 61% and Cisco accounting for 20%. However, Liu Yongxu and others believe that with the significant increase in the demand for high-speed optical modules such as 400G and 800G, the progress of silicon photonics solutions of the head companies of optical modules is in the leading position in the industry, and companies such as Zhongji Innolight, Coherent, and Xinyisheng are expected to gain most of the share and subvert the industry competition pattern.

According to incomplete statistics from the Financial Associated Press, in addition to Zhongji InnoLight and Xin Yisheng, the A-share listed companies that have deployed silicon photonics technology also include Robotec, Cambridge Technology, Huagong Technology, Changguang Huaxin, Yandong Micro, Tianfu Communication, Focuslight Technology, Yuanjie Technology, Bochuang Technology and Shijia Photonics, as shown in the figure below: