The first Glass Core Substrate prototypes, featuring co-packaged optics, were pictured at OFC 2026, giving us a glimpse of future chips.
First Glass Core Substrate Prototypes Surface at OFC 2026 With Co-Packaged Optics, Hinting at What 2029 AI Chips Will Look Like
At the Optical Fiber Communication Conference 2026, Dr. Ian Cutress of More Than Moore spotted prototypes of a glass-core substrate-based chip with an AOP (Active Optical Package). These prototypes (mockups, as Dr. Ian puts it) are a showcase of what next-generation chips will look like.
Glass Core substrates have been gaining interest, as they have several benefits over traditional organic substrate solutions. The current substrates are also facing shortages due to the AI supercycle, leading one of the biggest substrate suppliers, Ajinomoto, to raise prices. These supply constraints are pushing the industry to look into new advanced packaging solutions, and that's where Glass substrates come in.
In the pictures, we can see two substrate prototypes, one is based on the ceramics substrate and the other is based on a Glass substrate. The glass substrate is clear because it uses, well, glass, hence the transparency, while ceramics and organic substrates are often purplish brown and green in color, respectively. The mockup shows four compute chiplets, four DRAM chipsets, & eight smaller chipsets, but the most interesting part is the eight yellow chips on the outskirts of the glass substrate.
These are co-packaged optical interfaces, which are another technology that is set to drive future AI and HPC chips. With optics, electrical signals are converted to light using optical transceivers on the same package, reducing reliance on copper for data transfer. Silicon Photonics will change the way how next-gen AI data centers operate, offering a scale-up to bandwidth and transfer speeds. NVIDIA and AMD are both in the race to deliver the first Co-Packaged Optics solutions by 2027-2028.
The question that is on everyone's mind is when Glass Substrates will actually be brought to life. Intel already announced that it is working on glass substrates to replace organic packages, and its partners, such as Amkor, have recently stated readiness within three years, so we can expect the first rollout around 2029-2030.
The benefits of Glass Core Substrates are immense, such as offering 10x interconnect densities, cramming more chiplets than organic substrates, and offering seamless integration with optical interfaces such as CPO, and the rectangular wafers ensure higher yields versus traditional round wafers.
Three years is not a long wait in the grand scheme of things, and if Glass Substrates play out the way they are being marketed, then Intel's Foundry business is expected to become one of the leading chip-making centers of the AI world.
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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