Lightmatter announced the successful sampling of its Passage™ co-packaged optics (CPO) chiplet, demonstrating a record 1.6 Tbps throughput per fiber for AI interconnects. The result combines Lightmatter’s photonic engine with 112G PAM4 optical SerDes technology from Qualcomm Technologies, creating a high-density optical architecture designed for hyperscale AI clusters.
The system uses a 16-wavelength DWDM design operating at 112G per SerDes lane to achieve up to eight times the bandwidth density per fiber compared with existing near-packaged optics (NPO) and CPO implementations. Lightmatter said the architecture addresses one of the major constraints in scaling large AI systems: the bandwidth, power, and reach limitations of copper interconnects. Higher per-fiber throughput also reduces fiber counts in large clusters, simplifying cabling and lowering infrastructure costs.
The demonstration builds on Lightmatter’s Passage L-Series platform and collaboration with Alphawave Semi, which Qualcomm Technologies acquired earlier. The companies said the architecture is designed to scale toward 100 Tbps of total I/O per package for next-generation XPUs and switches while maintaining high power efficiency. Passage evaluation kits are now available for early customer testing. Lightmatter plans to demonstrate the technology at OFC 2026 in Los Angeles.
- Passage CPO chiplet demonstrated 1.6 Tbps per fiber throughput
- Architecture uses 16-wavelength DWDM with 112G PAM4 SerDes
- Integration combines Lightmatter Passage photonic engine with Qualcomm optical SerDes chiplet
- System provides up to 8× higher bandwidth density per fiber than current NPO and CPO approaches
- Technology targets scale-up and scale-out interconnects for large AI clusters
- Platform roadmap aims for 100 Tbps total I/O per package for future XPUs and switches
- Passage evaluation kits are available for lead hyperscale testing
- Demonstrations scheduled for OFC 2026 in Los Angeles
“By combining Qualcomm Technologies’ industry-leading 112Gbps SerDes with our Passage L-Series technology, we have achieved a record-breaking 1.6 Tbps per fiber,” said Nick Harris, founder and CEO of Lightmatter.
🌐 Analysis: The announcement highlights the rapid shift toward photonic interconnect architectures to support large-scale AI clusters where copper links and traditional pluggable optics face limits in power, reach, and cable density.
