This year, Nvidia() CEO Jensen Huang said Marvell’s() optical technology could make it the next trillion-dollar company. On Thursday, Marvell took an important step toward that goal by announcing an expanded partnership with U.S. foundry GlobalFoundries(). GlobalFoundries is known for its silicon photonics manufacturing capabilities.
The collaboration will see GlobalFoundries and Marvell jointly expand silicon-germanium (SiGe) wafer capacity at GlobalFoundries’ Burlington, Vermont fab. SiGe is commonly used to produce optical transceivers—which convert electrical signals to optical signals and vice versa—as well as laser modules used in many high-end switches from companies such as Nvidia.
According to GlobalFoundries, the added capacity will support near-packaged and co-packaged optics (CPO/NPO), as well as “next-generation” pluggable optics.
Nvidia has already adopted co-packaged optics in some of its Spectrum Ethernet and Quantum InfiniBand switches to reduce power consumption and improve reliability.