HyperLight, UMC partner for high-volume TFLN chip production

HyperLight Corporation announced a strategic manufacturing partnership with United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TWSE: 2303) and its subsidiary Wavetek Microelectronics Corporation for high-volume foundry production of thin-film lithium niobate chiplets on 6-inch and 8-inch wafers.

The collaboration aims to enable manufacturing capacity for AI and cloud infrastructure deployment. HyperLight serves as the platform architect while UMC and Wavetek provide foundry manufacturing infrastructure.

The TFLN Chiplet Platform targets short-reach data center pluggables, longer-reach coherent datacom and telecom modules, and co-packaged optics within a single manufacturing architecture. HyperLight has previously worked with Wavetek to bring TFLN photonics from laboratory to customer-qualified, high-volume manufacturing within a 6-inch CMOS foundry.

"TFLN has long been recognized as one of the most important technologies for the future of optical interconnects, but the industry has been waiting for a path to true manufacturing scale," said Mian Zhang, CEO of HyperLight.

UMC brings 8-inch production capability to support AI infrastructure growth requirements. "To achieve 1.6T bandwidth and beyond, TFLN is emerging as a promising material to deliver the bandwidth requirements for next-generation data center connectivity," said G C Hung, Senior Vice President of UMC.

The TFLN platform provides high modulation bandwidth, CMOS-level drive voltage and low optical loss. For AI networks, the technology reduces laser consumption and supports CMOS direct-drive voltage, lowering power consumption as lane speeds scale.

HyperLight delivers integrated photonics solutions based on thin-film lithium niobate technology. UMC operates 12 fabs with combined capacity exceeding 400,000 wafers per month. Wavetek specializes in compound semiconductors and advanced photonics production.

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