Alphawave Semi Optoelectronics Silicon Products Addressing Hyperscaler Datacenter and AI Interconnect Market

Alphawave Semi has revealed its portfolio of optoelectronics products addressing the high-speed interconnect semiconductor market, which is forecast to exceed US$4-billion by 2028.

The portfolio consists of DSPs for PAM4 and emerging Coherent-lite modulation. These are capable of transmitting AI driven high-speed digital compute data across hyperscale data center campuses.

Alphawave Semi’s portfolio of optoelectronics products leverage cutting-edge PAM4 SerDes with its differentiated WidEye DSP architecture and EyeQ advanced diagnostics technology to meet the needs of the leading hyperscalers and their buildout of accelerated AI compute infrastructure; with 800G and 1.6T interconnect solutions for meters of reach electrically and up to 20km optically based on PAM4 and emerging Coherent-lite solutions.

This full portfolio of connectivity products is sampling:

• Cu-Wave PAM4 DSP for Active Electrical Cables (AEC)
• O-Wave PAM4 DSP for Optical Retimer and Gearbox Transceivers
• Co-Wave Coherent-lite DSP for Optical Transceivers

Company and analyst quotes :
Babak Samimi, SVP and GM, connectivity products group, Alphawave Semi: “The industry is evolving with the rise of purpose-built data center campuses, which have been architected in response to the disruptions catalysed by mass adoption of AI versus traditional compute infrastructure. To meet the challenge, we focused our innovations into PAM4 and pioneered an investment into Coherent-lite DSPs with the aim of becoming a trusted supplier of silicon products into the growing high-speed optoelectronics semiconductor market.”

“Our Team has been working diligently to enable Alphawave Semi’s pivot to develop our own connectivity silicon products by leveraging our industry-leading high-speed SerDes, high-precision analog, as well as our expertise in SoC and firmware, signal integrity management, and advanced diagnostics powered by our unique WidEye and EyeQ technologies to help support this data center evolution.”

“We have had the honour of working with a leading North American hyperscaler and number of key ecosystem partners that have developed solutions with our newly revealed connectivity products; and we look forward to deploying these solutions to the market over the next 12 months.”

Vladimir Kozlov, CEO, LightCounting: “With a strong heritage in high-speed SerDes in leading-edge process nodes, this market entry should be highly disruptive and will be beneficial to hyperscalers. With the trend towards more distributed processing taking place over data center campuses, the PAM4 and Coherent-lite DSP market is set for continued growth and we forecast it will reach over $4 billion dollars by 2028. Being in a select pool of companies that are currently able to provide both PAM4 and Coherent-lite products, Alphawave is well positioned.”

Tony Pialis, CEO, Alphawave Semi: “The addition of the Connectivity Products Group is a significant achievement as it allows us to work with any leading hyperscaler in the way they need. If they need IP subsystems or chiplets for a bespoke system, we can provide it. If they want us to custom develop a silicon product, we can do that. And now, if they want to purchase a standard connectivity product powered by our leading-edge technologies, we can offer that too. This group is an important strategic asset, and I’m delighted to mark this launch to further Alphawave Semi’s mission as the next semiconductor leader in AI connectivity and compute.”

Alphawave Semi at OFC 2025
Meet product experts to explore and discuss Alphawave Semi’s PAM4 and Coherent-lite DSPs, and see the firm’s technologies in action at OFC 2025. The event will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA, from March 30 to April 3 (booth #5645).