GlobalFoundries silicon photonics funding brings $300M federal award
The Commerce Department plans a $300M award for GlobalFoundries, taking a 1% stake as the chipmaker expands optical networking R&D.
By Colin Brandt · Enterprise Reporter
· 3 min read
GlobalFoundries silicon photonics funding from the U.S. Commerce Department is set to add $300 million to the chipmaker’s research program, with the government taking a 1% equity stake as part of the transaction. The award, disclosed in a letter of intent announced by GlobalFoundries, targets optical chip technologies used in fiber networks that are becoming central to AI data center buildouts.
The new commitment follows a separate $375 million federal grant GlobalFoundries secured two months earlier for a quantum chip foundry. Together, the awards put the company deeper into Washington’s push to fund domestic capacity in semiconductor categories that sit around, rather than directly inside, leading-edge logic.
GlobalFoundries runs fabrication plants that manufacture semiconductors based on customers’ designs. The company is known for producing chips that do not require the newest process nodes, including low-power processors and other supporting silicon used in communications systems.
What is GlobalFoundries using the silicon photonics funding for?
GlobalFoundries said the $300 million will support silicon photonics research and development, with a focus on co-packaged optics, or CPO. Silicon photonics refers to chips that use light to move data through fiber-optic networks, a technology category tied closely to the bandwidth and power demands of AI infrastructure.
In current optical networking hardware, a switch processes data as electrical signals and typically relies on pluggable transceivers to convert those signals into light for fiber transmission. That handoff requires data to move across several pieces of hardware before leaving the switch, which adds power use and can introduce errors that require additional correction hardware.
CPO changes that architecture by placing optical transceiver capability much closer to, or directly with, the switch processor. GlobalFoundries says this design can cut power consumption and hardware costs by reducing the number of intermediate components involved in moving traffic from a switch into an optical network.
The company introduced a CPO manufacturing technology called SCALE in May. It also makes other optical components, including photodiodes and modulators. Photodiodes generate the light used in optical links, while modulators encode information into light beams by changing their physical properties.
The federal funding is intended to advance work on optical materials, photonic wafer technologies and advanced packaging. GlobalFoundries said its packaging work will include 3D hybrid bonding, a technique for stacking silicon dies on top of one another.
Why the award matters for AI data centers
AI clusters are putting more pressure on the networks that connect accelerators, switches and storage systems. Faster links can help, but power efficiency has become a hard constraint for operators trying to scale systems without letting networking gear consume a growing share of the data center power budget.
GlobalFoundries Chief Executive Officer Tim Breen said silicon photonics is “essential to AI infrastructure,” adding that the industry’s long-discussed move from copper to optical networking is now underway as workloads require higher bandwidth and better energy efficiency.
GlobalFoundries has set a target of developing silicon photonics hardware that can support 400 gigabits per second connections. The company also said it aims to deliver five times the energy efficiency of current products. The announcement did not give a production timetable for those targets.
This story draws on original reporting from SiliconANGLE.
