Compute · Qualcomm · Datacenter Dynamics
Lightmatter releases 19-firm strong initiative to standardize silicon photonics-ready infrastructure
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Photonic computing company Lightmatter has launched the Open Silicon Photonics for AI Systems initiative and published a 300-page white paper alongside the coalition’s founding members in an effort to standardize silicon photonics-ready infrastructure for AI.
Key facts
- The initiative, which will operate as an official workstream within the Open Compute Project, was first announced in March 2026 and had ten founding members, including Celestica, Corning, Dell
- Photonic computing company Lightmatter has launched the Open Silicon Photonics for AI Systems initiative and published a 300-page white paper alongside the coalition’s founding members in an effort
- Interconnect has become as fundamental to AI infrastructure performance as compute," said Nick Harris, founder and CEO of Lightmatter
- Aligning 19 companies on a system-level architectural vision was an enormous undertaking, and the reporter is proud of what this coalition has accomplished
Summary
The initiative, which will operate as an official workstream within the Open Compute Project, was first announced in March 2026 and had ten founding members, including Celestica, Corning, Dell Technologies, Flex, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, Hyve Solutions, Keysight, Qualcomm Technologies, and Quanta Cloud Technology. According to Lightmatter, the whitepaper, called ‘Architecture Vision: Open Silicon Photonics for AI Systems,’ aims to guide the development of a shared co-packaged optics (CPO) blueprint to scale Modular Hardware System (MHS)- and Open Rack v3 (ORv3)-compliant AI clusters from 72 to more than 1,024 nodes. Unlike pluggable optics, where the transceivers are kept separate from the main chips, CPO integrates optical and electrical components, such as optical engines and switching ASICs, on a single packaged substrate.