Lightmatter, a frontrunner in photonic supercomputing, has announced a strategic technical collaboration with Cadence aimed at advancing co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions for next-generation artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Through this collaboration, the two companies plan to combine Cadence’s silicon-proven, high-speed SerDes intellectual property with Lightmatter’s Passage optical engine. By aligning their efforts around advanced-node CMOS integration and industry-standard packaging workflows, the partnership seeks to accelerate the delivery of high-performance, manufacturing-ready CPO technologies.
As AI workloads continue to scale rapidly, the industry is reaching the limits of traditional data movement approaches. Consequently, the shift toward CPO marks a critical inflection point for AI infrastructure. Unlike conventional pluggable optics or near-packaged solutions, CPO enables fully integrated photonic interconnects using both 2D and 3D-stacked architectures. This architectural evolution allows compute and optical components to operate closer together, significantly improving bandwidth density and energy efficiency.
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Moreover, the collaboration leverages Cadence’s optics-optimized high-speed SerDes, Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) IP for chiplet-based disaggregation, and deep electronic design automation (EDA) expertise. When combined with Lightmatter’s leadership in silicon photonics and laser technologies, the partnership establishes a robust roadmap of silicon-proven building blocks. These technologies are expected to play a key role in enabling hyperscalers to design and deploy custom AI infrastructure chips optimized for performance, scalability, and power efficiency.
“The next big leap in AI performance requires a fundamental change in how we move data,” said Ritesh Jain, SVP of Engineering & Operations at Lightmatter. “Cadence’s connectivity IP is an ideal complement to our Passage platform. Together, we are paving the way for CPO deployment by solving the most complex optics-electronics integration challenges, ensuring that the next generation of AI clusters can achieve the energy efficiency and bandwidth density required for the next wave of frontier models.”
In parallel, Cadence views this collaboration as a natural extension of its long-term commitment to advanced interconnect innovation. As AI demand surges across industries, both scale-up and scale-out architectures are reshaping data center design. Addressing these challenges requires seamless integration of electrical and optical technologies at the silicon level.
“As AI capacity continues to expand dramatically to accommodate unprecedented demand and workloads, scale-up and scale-out are transforming AI infrastructure,” said Boyd Phelps, SVP and GM of the Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence. “Cadence is dedicated to providing next-generation optical interconnect solutions to optimize data center performance and efficiency, and our collaboration with Lightmatter demonstrates our commitment to the evolution of advanced interconnects. By integrating our high-speed SerDes and UCIe IP into this new CPO platform, we’re helping our customers build more scalable, power-efficient AI systems.”
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Industry analysts also see the move as timely and necessary. While CPO adoption has been debated for years, momentum is clearly building toward integrated photonic designs as AI systems push beyond existing electrical interconnect limits.
“While the industry has long debated the timing of CPO, the move toward integrated 3D-stacked photonic designs is now inevitable,” said Roy Chua, founder and principal at AvidThink. “This collaboration between Cadence and Lightmatter is crucial because it addresses the architectural foundation of electrical-optical connectivity integration. By optimizing advanced CMOS IP with a future-ready CPO design, they are giving the ecosystem the tools needed to escape the limitations of shoreline-bound interconnects.”
Overall, the Lightmatter–Cadence collaboration signals a major step forward in redefining how data moves inside AI systems. By aligning proven silicon IP with cutting-edge photonic innovation, the partnership aims to unlock a new era of scalable, energy-efficient AI infrastructure built for the demands of tomorrow.
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