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Tower Semiconductor and Scintil Photonics develop integrated DWDM laser for AI infrastructure
Sunday, March 1, 2026 at 09:40 PM
Tower Semiconductor and Scintil Photonics have jointly developed a heterogeneous integrated DWDM laser aimed at AI infrastructure and data center optical interconnects. This development leverages advanced silicon photonics manufacturing processes to integrate Indium Phosphide lasers directly onto silicon wafers.
Context
Tower Semiconductor and Scintil Photonics have announced the successful development and availability of the world’s first heterogeneously integrated DWDM laser sources, branded as LEAF Light™, designed for next-generation AI infrastructure. This breakthrough integrates active lasers directly onto silicon photonics wafers, overcoming a major bottleneck in Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) by eliminating the need for complex external laser coupling. The technology enables edge bandwidth densities of 6.4 Tbps/mm while significantly reducing power consumption and latency compared to traditional copper or pluggable optical solutions.
This partnership positions Tower Semiconductor as a critical foundry for the AI supply chain, with the company recently increasing its total investment in silicon photonics and silicon germanium capacity to $920 million. The move is timely as AI-related demand now accounts for over 35% of Tower’s revenue mix, with its photonics segment growing 115% year-over-year to $228 million in 2025. Backed by investors including NVIDIA, Scintil’s platform is now validated on Tower’s high-volume production lines, supporting customer evaluations for deployments expected to scale into millions of units by 2028 as the AI networking market moves toward a projected $200 billion valuation by 2030.
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