TSMC Partners Up With NVIDIA & Broadcom to Develop Cutting-Edge Silicon Photonics

wccftech.com:

Korean media reports that TSMC has teamed up with Broadcom & NVIDIA to develop cutting-edge silicon photonics, in order to provide massive transmission speeds for AI computing.

For those unaware, silicon photonics is a next-gen adaption of the traditional copper transmission cables, which combines laser and silicon technology to provide a solution that guarantees high data transfer speeds. Silicon photonics have gained immense traction in the industry, particularly with the advent of the AI boom, since it plays a crucial role in data centers and HPC machines.

Taiwan Economic Daily reports that TSMC, Broadcom, and NVIDIA are forming a partnership with the aim of innovating the "silicon photonic" industry. TSMC has been rumored to allocate 200 professionals for R&D, primarily focusing on the tech in silicon photonic integration into high-speed computing chips, which could potentially lead to a major breakthrough for the AI industry.

TSMC is apparently highly optimistic towards next-gen silicon photonics development since the company's VP Yu Zhenhua has stated that the development could solve several problems currently existing in the industry:

If we can provide a good silicon photonics integrated system, we can solve the two key issues of energy efficiency and AI computing power. This will be a new one.

Paradigm shift. We may be at the beginning of a new era.

The semiconductor industry sees silicon photonics as the future, mainly due to the benefits it brings onboard. The conventional "electricity" data transmissions come with compromised transfer speeds, & the industry is demanding 'higher computational speeds" given that genAI development has reached unprecedented levels. To cater to this, silicon photons convert electricity