GlobalFoundries lines up $300M for optical chips

GlobalFoundries signed a letter of intent for a $300 million CHIPS Act R&D award to develop silicon photonics and advanced packaging for AI data centers, while the U.S. government takes an approximately 1% stake in the chipmaker. The Register’s report on the proposed award says the work targets 400 Gb/s-per-lane links plus near- and co-packaged optics. Builders following Nvidia’s $50 billion data-center loop should file away the constraint shift: public industrial policy is now funding the optical fabric around accelerators, not only the accelerators themselves.