Nvidia-Led CPO Expansion Drives Order Rush for Korean Materials and Equipment Firms - thelec.net

As demand for high-performance data transmission in AI data centers continues to rise, Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) technology is emerging as a critical development in the semiconductor industry. Recently... Read original →

CPO is triggering a structural reshuffle across the silicon photonics stack. Korean firms have secured pivotal roles—pump lasers, active alignment systems, optical amplifiers—embedding themselves into NVIDIA’s AI datacenter ecosystem. This not only forces upstream material purity and laser wavelength tolerances to tighten but also accelerates adoption of novel processes like LSR in packaging. However, if U.S. export controls expand to cover CPO-related tools, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and LG Innotek will face steep compliance costs, compelling them to reconfigure production across Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia. In response to Korea’s midstream surge, Broadcom and Marvell may counter by acquiring Israeli or European silicon photonics startups. Over the next 18 months, as 800G transitions to 1.6T, vertically integrated Korean suppliers will dominate optical engine yield battles, while module makers lacking co-design capabilities between ASICs and optics risk obsolescence.