Coherent, a key supplier of NVIDIA's AI stack, broke ground on its Texas facility, delivering the next generation of Optical solutions.
Coherent's Expanded Texas Facility Will Scale Production of InP Wafers For NVIDIA's Optical Solutions
As demand for AI drives up the supply chain, NVIDIA and its partners are witnessing immense growth. One of these partners is Coherent, who have commenced the expansion of its wafer fabrication plant in Sherman, Texas.
In the presser, NVIDIA states that Coherent is responsible for making lasers, optical components, and compound semiconductors that wire AI systems together, essentially, Optical fabrics. With the new facility, Coherent plans to expand the production of its InP (6-inch indium phosphide) wafers that will carry data between chips, servers, and data centers. This is a crucial step for NVIDIA as it is racing towards achieving Silicon Photonics dominance with Co-Packaged Optical solutions.
The Coherent fab will be financed through a $50 million CHIPS Act grant, delivering the promise of "Made in US". This builds upon the $17 million, which was already supported through the Texas CHIPS program and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation. NVIDIA has already said to have committed to producing up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure on US soil.
Now time to get a bit more technical, and answer why Optical solutions are required for AI data-centers. NVIDIA gives the example of 576 GPUs spanning across eight racks and operating as a single system, similar to how NVIDIA's next-gen Vera Rubin Ultra NVL576 platform will look. This high-end AI datacenter solution will require something beyond copper, and that's where silicon photonics comes in.
Using traditional copper links means higher cost, poor signals, and more power requirements. Optical solutions have a one-time penalty, as NVIDIA puts it, and once paid for, the cost to travel data through and forth is nearly free. This makes NVL576 with Optics a more power-efficient option, and one that we are heading towards.
Coherent's pluggable optics power NVIDIA's networking switches, moving data at light speeds. Each plug carries an Indium Phosphide laser, and these are now being used across NVIDIA's Spectrum-X and Quantum-X photonics switches. The world is entering the Co-Packaged Optics era, and NVIDIA is working with its partners, such as Coherent, to scale AI datacenter deployments across the globe.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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