Silicon photonics interconnects are hitting an inflection point. At OFC 2026, GlobalFoundries showed how detachable connectors and 3D packaging tackle the 100+ fiber assembly challenge in AI inference, while building a complete US-based optical packaging ecosystem.

At OFC 2026, NVIDIA showed optical I/O built on a 3D stack of a 7nm EIC and a 65nm PIC. Using clock forwarding with bandpass filtering, it breaks both the power and density bottlenecks of AI cluster interconnect, marking a new era for silicon photonics packaging.