The U.S. government will provide $300 million (about 433.0 billion won) to support GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc.'s silicon photonics technology development to increase data transfer speeds and power efficiency at artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. As AI Semiconductor competition expands beyond computing performance to data transfer between chips and optical packaging technology, the United States is accelerating efforts to build a next-generation AI Semiconductor supply chain.
On the 29th (local time), Reuters reported that GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. will receive $300 million in research and development (R&D) funding for silicon photonics from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The support is part of former President Donald Trump's administration's policy to focus CHIPS Act R&D funds on core next-generation semiconductor technologies. The United States is expanding investment in AI data centers and next-generation semiconductor infrastructure amid its high-tech competition with China.
Silicon photonics is a technology that transmits data between chips using light instead of electrical signals. It can send and receive more data faster than conventional electrical connections, and it can also reduce power consumption and heat generation, making it a core technology for AI data centers.
Through this support, the U.S. government also plans to promote the development of co-packaged optics (CPO) technology. CPO is a technology that places silicon photonics-based optical components and AI processors together in a single package. By shortening the distance between the chip and the optical components, it can increase data transfer speeds and power efficiency.
In particular, as AI models grow in size and data throughput surges, data centers are finding that not only the computing performance of individual semiconductors but also how quickly data can be transferred between chips is emerging as a key competitive edge. As a result, technological competition in the AI Semiconductor industry is spreading from a focus on graphics processing units (GPUs) and high bandwidth memory (HBM) to optical communications and advanced packaging.
Currently, in silicon photonics and advanced optical packaging, companies such as Taiwan's TSMC and Israel's Tower Semiconductor have secured manufacturing capabilities. In this context, the U.S. government aims to build a supply chain that can handle everything domestically from research to production and packaging of related technologies.
This support is separate from the $1.5 billion (about 2.169 trillion won) in production-facility funding the U.S. government provided to GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. in 2024. Greg Bartlett, GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc.'s chief technology officer (CTO), said, "The fact that a single company in the United States can offer the entire process—from the silicon wafer stage to shipping optical modules that have completed verification and testing—is a differentiated capability unique to GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc."
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. is expanding production facilities in Malta, New York, and Burlington, Vermont, using the existing support funds. The newly awarded funds will be invested in research on new materials and manufacturing technologies needed to produce and package optical components at these facilities. With this, GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. aims to raise data transfer speeds to 400 gigabits per second (Gbps) and improve energy efficiency by up to five times over current-generation technology.
Recently, the U.S. government has been concentrating CHIPS Act R&D funds on advanced semiconductor fields. It previously decided to invest $150 million (about 217.0 billion won) in developing semiconductor manufacturing equipment and $2 billion (about 2.893 trillion won) in supporting quantum computing corporations. As power consumption and data transfer bottlenecks at AI data centers emerge as new challenges for the semiconductor industry, U.S. semiconductor support policies are also expected to expand from production-facility aid to investments in core next-generation semiconductor technologies such as optical communications and advanced packaging.