Alibaba Cloud Begins Volume Deployment of In-House 400G/800G/1.6T Silicon Photonics Chips

C114 News, September 10 (Jiu Jiu) — Optoelectronic integration, a key breakthrough direction for the post-Moore era, is reshaping the industry landscape with strong momentum in a trillion-yuan-scale market, driving the optical communications industry into a new era of architectural revolution. The main technology iteration trends for the optical communications industry in 2026 are already clear: silicon photonics is rapidly replacing traditional EML technology, with its share of use rising sharply in high-end products such as 800G and 1.6T.

Today, at the Optoelectronic Integration Technology and Industry Development Forum held alongside CIOE, Yin Yanlong, an optical network technology expert at Alibaba Cloud, delivered a keynote speech titled "Evolution Trends of High-Speed, High-Density Optical Interconnect Technology for Data Centers." Focusing on silicon photonic chips, Scale Up optical networks and NPO, he shared Alibaba Cloud's technical practices and outlook in high-speed, high-density optical interconnection.

Robust AI computing demand is driving rapid increases in bandwidth and speed for intelligent computing optical networks in data centers, with optical interconnect technology evolving from 400G and 800G toward 1.6T, 3.2T and even 6.4T, 12.8T. "Alibaba Cloud data centers have deployed millions of 400G and 800G optical interconnect modules in volume. 1.6T optical modules are expected to enter mass production in the second half of the year, while R&D and validation of 3.2T/6.4T NPO is getting underway in parallel," Yin Yanlong said.

Yin Yanlong said that as AI models develop and computing scale expands, Scale Up optical networks are being deployed rapidly, giving rise to multiple trends such as "copper near, optics far" and "copper advances, optics retreats." In optical interconnect technology roadmaps, silicon photonic products currently meet the coherent requirements for inter-data-center links. Inside data centers, short-reach optical interconnect products at 100G and 200G per lane are already covered, while new product development has also begun for NPO, CPO and Scale Up. "Compared with VCSEL and EML technology, silicon photonics offers advantages in cost, supply and domestic production, and its share of domestic demand has risen significantly."

Alibaba Cloud has developed a fully in-house 100G/Lane silicon photonic interconnect chip. Its first single-wavelength 4X100G silicon photonic chip delivers excellent performance, supports product development such as FRO/LPO, has entered mass production and was the first to complete large-scale deployment. Using a fully domestic silicon photonics process line, Alibaba Cloud has begun R&D and mass production of a single-wavelength 200G silicon photonic interconnect chip with a modulation bandwidth >65GHz, meeting the specification requirements for data center optical modules.

Yin Yanlong noted that for 400G per lane, pure silicon photonic platforms, lithium niobate platforms and InP platforms are all being explored at an accelerated pace. In the 400G-IMDD era, the InP platform still demonstrates superior bandwidth performance.

On technology choices for high-speed, high-density optical interconnects in scale-up architectures, Yin Yanlong said NPO's open, decoupled approach offers a faster path to deployment than CPO and better high-speed link transmission performance than pluggables, making it a key optical interconnect technology to watch in both scale-out and scale-up optical networks. He also noted that in NPO deployments, optical engines still face technical challenges such as high-density coupling and high-speed packaging, while ecosystem completeness and solution standardization will take time.