Marvell이 GlobalFoundries에 맞춤형 AI 네트워킹 및 컴퓨팅 실리콘을 위한 웨이퍼 생산 라인 증설 압박을 가하고 있다.

Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that Marvell’s optics technology could position the company as the next trillion-dollar enterprise. On Thursday, Marvell advanced toward that status by announcing an expanded partnership with GlobalFoundries, a U.S. wafer fabrication facility renowned for its work in silicon photonics manufacturing. Under the agreement, GlobalFoundries and Marvell will expand silicon germanium (SiGe) wafer production at the company’s Burlington, Vermont plant.

SiGe is widely used in optical transceivers, which convert electrical signals to optical ones and back again, as well as in laser modules powering high-end network switches from Nvidia and other vendors. According to GlobalFoundries, the added manufacturing capacity will support the production of near- and co-packaged optics (CPO/NPO) alongside “next-gen” pluggable optics. Nvidia already integrates co-packaged optics into select Spectrum Ethernet and Quantum InfiniBand switches to reduce power consumption and enhance system reliability. Industry analysts expect next-generation pluggable optics to be deployed in large multirack architectures, including Huawei’s new Ascend 960DT-based SuperPods, while Nvidia’s own future multi-rack systems are widely anticipated to adopt the same approach.

GlobalFoundries states that its SiGe technology has already been validated at speeds of 200 Gbps per lane, a requirement for 1.6 Tbps transceivers. Achieving faster lane speeds could pave the way for 3.2 Tbps transceivers, which remain on the company’s development roadmap.

Demand for these optics technologies has surged, driven largely by artificial intelligence. Speaking during Computex this spring, Marvell CEO Matt Murphy explained why demand for optics is set to explode. Historically, optical interconnects have primarily linked racks to resources across data centers, while copper cables handled shorter distances within a few meters due to their lower cost and power efficiency. However, as lane speeds increased from 25 Gbps to 50, 100, and eventually 200 Gbps, copper interconnects began hitting practical physical limits. At 400 Gbps per lane, copper reaches its effective ceiling even within a single rack; beyond that threshold, copper cables cannot reliably transmit signals beyond 1.25 meters.

Consequently, the broader semiconductor and networking ecosystem has invested heavily to strengthen optics and photonics supply chains, and GlobalFoundries is far from the only player scaling production. Nvidia, in particular, has committed billions to optics technology firms, including $2 billion apiece to Lumentum and Coherent. Several months later, Coherent announced plans to quadruple production of indium phosphide wafers—used in lasers, photodetectors, and modulators—at its Sherman, Texas, fabrication facility.