SK hynix and Global Researchers Publish Co-Packaged Optics Roadmap in Nature Electronics for AI Infrastructure
SK hynix, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Virginia (UVA), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Yonsei University, has published a technology roadmap for co-packaged optics (CPO) in 'Nature Electronics.' This research addresses the growing 'bandwidth wall' bottleneck in hyperscale AI clusters, where data movement between thousands of GPUs and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) stacks is becoming a limiting factor. The paper proposes an optics-centric co-design architecture that connects memory and processors through optical links, aiming to improve the scalability of large-scale AI systems. CPO integrates optical transceivers into the same package as the processor, allowing chips to exchange data using light instead of traditional copper-based electrical interconnects, which suffer from signal loss and high power consumption over longer distances. 
