Ayar Labs Introduces UCIe Optical Chiplet for AI Infrastructure Scalability
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 31, 2025 -- Ayar Labs, a leader in optical interconnect solutions for large-scale AI workloads, today announced the industry’s first Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) optical interconnect chiplet to maximize AI infrastructure performance and efficiency while reducing latency and power consumption. By incorporating a UCIe electrical interface, this solution is designed to eliminate data bottlenecks and integrate easily into customer chip designs.
Capable of achieving 8 Tbps bandwidth, the TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet is powered by Ayar Labs’ 16-wavelength SuperNova light source. The integration of a UCIe interface means this solution not only delivers high performance and efficiency but also enables interoperability among chiplets from different vendors. This compatibility with the UCIe standard creates a more accessible, cost-effective ecosystem, which streamlines the adoption of advanced optical technologies necessary for scaling AI workloads and overcoming the limitations of traditional copper interconnects.
“Optical interconnects are needed to solve power density challenges in scale-up AI fabrics,” said Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. “We recognized early on the potential for CPO, which positioned us to drive adoption of optical solutions in AI applications. As we continue to push the boundaries of optical technologies, we’re also bringing together the supply chain, manufacturing, and testing and validation processes needed for customers to deploy these solutions at scale.”
Ayar Labs has combined silicon photonics with CMOS manufacturing processes to enable the use of optical interconnects in a chiplet form factor within multi-chip packages. This allows GPUs and other accelerators to communicate across a wide range of distances, from millimeters to kilometers, while effectively functioning as a single, giant GPU.
“As the leader in chiplet technology, we are proud to continue our long history of supporting industry standards that drive innovation forward and create solutions to meet our customers' and the industry's needs,” said Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer and executive vice president at AMD. "The robust, open and vendor neutral chiplet ecosystem provided by UCIe is critical to meeting the challenge of scaling networking solutions to deliver on the full potential of AI. We're excited that Ayar Labs is one of the first deployments that leverages the UCIe platform to its full extent.”
Join Ayar Labs at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) booth #2958, March 30-April 3, 2025, in San Francisco. The company will showcase its optical interconnect solutions for AI and how they will transform system-level implementations for AI scale-up architectures.
Explore how Ayar Labs' optical I/O is revolutionizing AI system architectures in the Jabil booth at OFC as well. See a model of a Jabil server sled featuring 64 Ayar Labs SuperNova light sources, powering up to a petabit per second of bi-directional bandwidth. This innovative design enables greater compute density per rack, enhances cooling efficiency, and supports hot-swap capability for reduced server downtime..
For a full list of Ayar Labs’ activities at OFC, visit the OFC web page for more information.
About Ayar Labs
Ayar Labs is the leader in optical interconnect solutions that move data at the speed of AI. Recognizing that the complexity and size of AI models are increasing at a rate that traditional interconnect technology cannot handle, the company has developed the industry’s first optical I/O solution that enables customers to maximize the compute efficiency and performance of growing AI infrastructure, while reducing costs, latency and power consumption. Based on open standards and optimized for both AI training and inference, Ayar Labs’ optical I/O solution is backed by a robust ecosystem that enables it to integrate smoothly into AI systems at scale. Ayar Labs was founded in 2015.
Source: Ayar Labs
