AMD is looking to strengthen its position in the race against Nvidia with a new acquisition. The company purchased Enosemi, a company developing photonic integrated circuits. Silicon photonics is seen as a crucial next step into the next era of computing, with many leading tech companies and fabs making steps into photonics over the past year.
Enosemi is a Silicon Valley-based company that has worked with AMD and companies like GlobalFoundries to license, build, and ship photonic integrated circuit IP since 2023. A blog post from AMD SVP Brian Amick claims that the Enosemi team "will help [AMD] immediately scale our ability to support and develop a variety of photonics and co-packaged optics solutions across next-gen AI systems."
Photonics refers to a newer technology in semiconductors, based on the use of light rather than electrons to send information. Photonics has already been deployed in network switches, inter-chiplet interconnects, and a host of other applications to assist and one day perhaps replace electronic integrated circuits. Light-based ICs have higher speeds, more bandwidth, and better power efficiency than electronic ICs, making them a highly attractive new frontier in chip design.
AMD's move to acquire a leading photonics firm like Enosemi shows a commitment to matching Nvidia's own push into photonics. Nvidia has already released a 400 TB/s network switch platform built on silicon photonics for the datacenter, with more plans to incorporate the tech into its stack of AI solutions.
In AMD's press release for the acquisition, the company shares, "This acquisition strengthens AMD's position as a provider of full-stack AI solutions, combining its leading CPUs, GPUs, and adaptive SoCs with enhanced networking, software, and system integration expertise."
AMD's goal of becoming a full-stack supplier to compete with Nvidia has so far also included the acquisitions of ZT Systems, Mipsology, and Silo AI, plus partnerships across the enterprise solution stack. Nvidia has cemented itself as a true provider across the entire datacenter, with competitors Intel and Arm also seeking to build up similar positions.
Speculators have long claimed that China is at risk of changing lanes and surpassing the Western tech sphere through the study and application of silicon photonics, with China's research on next-gen compute technologies more than doubling the U.S.'s over the last five years. AMD does not seem content to let either Nvidia or Chinese competition surpass it in this field anytime soon.
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