AMSTERDAM – STMicroelectronics (STM, STMPA.PA) on Thursday said it is launching a new computer chip targeting the booming market for AI datacenter equipment, which it has developed in cooperation with Amazon’s (AMZN) web services arm AWS.
With top US software firms planning to spend $500 billion on AI infrastructure as part of the Stargate venture, demand is growing not only for the specialised computing chips made by Nvidia (NVDA) but also chips used in memory, power and communications applications.
ST is targeting the communications market with a photonics chip — one that uses light rather than electricity — to increase speed and reduce power consumption in converters known as transceivers. Hundreds of thousands of transceivers are needed in an advanced AI datacenter.
“We have signed a collaboration agreement with AWS, which has been intimately involved in the development … and which will deploy this technology in their infrastructure as it reaches production stage later this year,” Vincent Fraisse, general manager at STMicro’s radio and communications chip division, told journalists.
“We also have an ongoing collaboration with the leading provider of optical solutions, the market leader in pluggable optical transceivers, for them to use (the chip) in their next generation … transceivers,” Fraisse added, without disclosing the name of the company.
Top transceiver makers include US-based Coherent (COHR) and Cisco (CSCO), and China’s Innolight and Accelink.
According to research firm LightCounting, the market for such devices was $7 billion in 2024 and it will quadruple to $24 billion by 2030.
STMicro will mass-produce the chips at its factory in Crolles, France.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
