Reported Earlier: Tower Semiconductor And NewPhotonics Announce Volume Shipment Of Laser-Integrated Serviceable Optical Engines Designed To Meet The Urgent And Growing Demand For High-Bandwidth, Energy-Efficient Optical Interconnects In AI Infrastructure

Companies commercialize scale manufacturability of 800G to 1.6T PICs in external pluggable and CPX MSA compliant NPO socket pluggable solutions built on PH18DA platform designed for high-density monolithic laser integration, SOAs, modulators and detectors

MIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel, and TEL AVIV, Israel, September 17, 2026 – Tower Semiconductor (NASDAQ/TASE: TSEM), the leading foundry for high-value analog semiconductor solutions, and NewPhotonics®, a fabless semiconductor delivering innovative photonic IC chip solutions, today announced high-volume shipment of laser-integrated serviceable optical engines designed to meet the urgent and growing demand for high-bandwidth, energy-efficient optical interconnects in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The PIC optical engine chips support OEM solutions ranging from FRO/LRO/LPO and Extra-Dense Packaged Optics (XPO) pluggable transceiver modules and Near-Packaged Optics (NPO) socket pluggable applications. Shipping volume production PICs today support data rates from 800G to 1.6T, with future volume manufacturing planned at 6.4T NPO solutions suitable for scale-out and scale-up architectures.

The collaboration leverages the high-volume PH18DA silicon photonics (SiPho) technology platform featuring heterogeneously integrated InP components enabling monolithic integration of lasers, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), modulators, and photodetectors on a single photonic integrated circuit. This highly integrated, optical-domain focused approach reduces complexity and manufacturing variability to supply better yield, reliability, and time-to-market with a leading-edge photonic device.

Volume shipment of NewPhotonics NPG102 PIC products for 800G and 1.6T feature 200G-per-lane designs and heterogeneously integrated lasers on a monolithic PIC enable customers to leverage optical signal processing in a unified architecture that delivers power efficiency, bandwidth density, and manufacturing consistency. The CPX-MSA compliant NPC505 chipsets for 6.4T will begin volume shipment in 1H27.