Marvell reveals next-generation silicon photonics platform

Marvell demonstrated its next-generation silicon photonics platform at the 2023 Marvell Analyst Day. We're finally seeing the company's progress toward packaged silicon photonics devices designed to dramatically increase I/O capacity and reach in future generations of products.

Most of Marvell's silicon photonics IP comes from its acquisition of Inphi. Inphi built COLORZ 100, a 100G ZR fiber used to connect Microsoft data center campuses.

COLORZ 400 was released in 2020 and will enter production in the second half of 2021. Hundreds of thousands of pluggable modules have been deployed. COLORZ 800 is an 800G single wavelength optical module. This combines the company's 800G silicon photonics solutions with our previously introduced 800G Orion coherent DSP.

The company has a path to quadruple module speeds, from 800G, which is a hot topic today, to 3.2T using 16-channel silicon photonics technology.

Now, Marvell is starting to talk about its light engine, too.

Marvell has been working on integrating silicon photonics into packaging for some time. This is an important technology that we have discussed for years because it will allow for technologies such as remote memory (increased capacity), faster chip-to-chip interconnects, and a wider range of devices in the system to reside on. On the network switch side, it's much more efficient than driving signals from the switch package through the PCB to a pluggable optical cage. This co-packaging typically requires technologies such as TSV to drill through silicon components, but this is a set of technologies that our industry as a whole needs.

What we should note here is that Marvell is demonstrating laser integration on the package. We've discussed this a few times, but the laser is typically the least reliable component in an optical module, so moving it out of the package and into a pluggable module turns it into a service item. With chips costing tens of thousands of dollars, improving reliability is important.

At its 2023 Analyst Day, Marvell showed off its new SiPho light engine for AI. This is the company's new 200G per channel silicon photonics light engine. It integrates hundreds of components into the engine.

Perhaps the biggest claim is that it will deliver Tbps performance at less than 10 picojoules per bit. This is an important target efficiency metric in the industry. The light engine can then be used as a pluggable optical module or a co-packaged optical solution.

Marvell said the light engine has been tape-out and is about to undergo live demonstrations. Marvell said it plans to sell it as a light engine rather than a pluggable module for data centers. Others will assemble it into pluggable modules. It could also co-package the light engine in a switch or another chip.

This will be the next generation of battlefield technology as the industry strives to create larger, more efficient packages to improve performance while addressing power consumption challenges.

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