Lightmatter Passage L200: Record 1.6 Tbps Per Fiber

Abstract

Lightmatter announced successful sampling of the Passage Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) chiplet, demonstrating record-breaking 1.6 Tbps throughput per fiber. Integration with Qualcomm Technologies' 112G PAM4 optical SerDes creates the first photonic interconnect to reach this bandwidth density.

Key Contributions

• Record 1.6 Tbps per fiber throughput
• L200 3D CPO family: 32 Tbps and 64 Tbps versions (5-10x over existing solutions)
• Over 200 Tbps total I/O bandwidth per chip package
• Up to 8x faster AI model training time
• L20 engine: 6.4 Tbps each direction for multi-rack scale-up

Full Content

Lightmatter's photonic interconnects address the bandwidth bottleneck in AI data centers. As models grow larger, the communication between GPUs/TPUs becomes the limiting factor rather than compute itself. The L200 enables AI chips to exchange data at speeds previously impossible with electrical interconnects.

The Passage L20, also announced March 2026, targets the transition from electrical to optical interconnect for high-bandwidth scale-out networking — the next frontier after co-packaged optics solves scale-up.

Partnership with Qualcomm demonstrates the ecosystem approach: Lightmatter provides photonics, established chip companies provide the electrical SerDes.

Source: Lightmatter Passage L200 — Lightmatter