Photonic Integrated Circuits and Co-packaged Optics for HPC and AI Data Centers

As data-center architectures scale to support rapidly expanding AI, HPC, and cloud workloads, interconnect requirements are growing at an unprecedented pace. Increasing pin counts per package, larger silicon footprints, and rising I/O power consumption are pushing traditional electrical interconnects toward fundamental limits in reach, bandwidth, and energy efficiency. Against this backdrop, optical interconnects are becoming an essential enabling technology, offering superior scalability, higher aggregate bandwidth, and improved energy efficiency for next-generation systems. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and co-packaged optics (CPO) are therefore emerging as critical technologies for HPC and AI data centers, where interconnects must simultaneously deliver massive bandwidth density and strict energy-efficiency targets. In this presentation, IDTechEx will take an in-depth look at PIC technologies, examining how PIC-based interconnects are evolving to meet these next-generation requirements. The session will also explore how accelerating AI workloads are driving sustained growth and structural change in the PIC transceiver market over the coming decade.