[Image: Celestial AI]
On 23 October, optical-interconnect technology company Celestial AI, USA, announced the acquisition of silicon photonics intellectual property (IP) from Rockley Photonics, UK. Celestial AI said the acquired portfolio, which includes issued and pending patents, covers three main technology categories: optoelectronic systems-in-package, electro-absorption modulators and optical switch technology.
According to the company, all of these areas are relevant to multiple AI data center infrastructure applications. In a press release, Celestial AI said that the Rockley IP “directly aligns with Celestial AI’s core technology roadmap and enhances the deployment and commercialization strategy of the company’s Photonic Fabric technology platform.”
A look at the Photonic Fabric
Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is an interconnect scheme designed to move optically encoded data to the “point of compute” within the electronic GPU or application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). That setup, founder and CEO Dave Lazovsky told OPN in an interview last August, keeps data in the more efficient optical domain for as long as possible before converting it to the electrical domain for actual processing. The company claims that the Photonic Fabric allows the disaggregation of compute and memory, enabling each component to be leveraged and scaled with greater efficiency.
According to Celestial AI, the Photonic Fabric delivers more than 25 times greater bandwidth and memory capacity compared with existing optical interconnect alternatives and copper, while reducing latency and power consumption by up to 10 times. In March of this year, the company completed a new US$175 million Series C funding round. That same month, Celestial AI announced that a number of data center hyperscaler and semiconductor customers had begun working with the firm to design Photonic Fabric chiplets as “an initial phase of technology adoption.”
Building an IP “war chest”
Rockley Photonics was an “early pioneer” in silicon photonics, according to the Celestial AI press release. In 2021, Rockley became a publicly traded company through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, and shifted its focus from data communications to noninvasive biomarker sensing technology based on integrated photonics and spectroscopy. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2023, but emerged from bankruptcy six months later after a comprehensive financial restructuring and securing US$35 million in funding from its stakeholders.
The addition of the Rockley IP brings Celestial AI’s total IP portfolio to more than 200 patents globally, according to a company press release.
In a recent interview with OPN, Lazovsky highlights both the scope and the priority dates of the Rockley patents, which date back to 2014, as particularly appealing for Celestial AI. “We’re really building a war chest of intellectual property that we’ll use as necessary to make sure that we are protecting ourselves and our customers,” explains Lazovsky. The addition of the Rockley IP brings Celestial AI’s total IP portfolio to more than 200 patents globally, according to a company press release.
“At Celestial AI, we take intellectual property really seriously,” says Lazovsky. “And we’re in an extraordinarily strong IP position in the field of thermally stable silicon photonics for these types of optoelectronic systems and packages. That really is the key—if you integrate a thermally stable photonic integrated circuit with a high-TDP [thermal design power] ASIC … then you have the ability to deliver data directly to the point of consumption within the processors, and it’s a game changer.”