Lightmatter Unveils Passage M1000 Photonic Superchip

Source type: Technical report (company press release) Announced: 2025-03-31 (re-surfaced as flagship at Computex 2026 alongside the L200) Foundry / packaging: GlobalFoundries (GF Fotonix silicon photonics platform), Amkor

Summary

The Passage M1000 is Lightmatter's 3D Photonic Superchip — a multi-reticle active photonic interposer designed to host the world's largest die complexes (thousands of GPUs in a single domain) in a 3D package and feed them with optical I/O routable virtually anywhere on the interposer surface. Where the earlier-generation L200 is a co-packaged-optics module (1.6 Tbps/fiber, 200+ Tbps/package), the M1000 is the interposer-scale platform that the die complex stacks onto, carrying high-bandwidth WDM optical signals across an extensive, reconfigurable on-die waveguide network. Lightmatter positions it as an order-of-magnitude bandwidth-density and package-size improvement over conventional CPO.

The M1000 introduces the world's first built-in solid-state optical circuit switching on a compute interposer — moving optical switching from the rack/network layer onto the package itself.

Key Claims & Figures (quoted)

• 114 Tbps total optical bandwidth — the headline interconnect figure.
• 256 optical fibers, at 448 Gbps bandwidth per fiber, with fully integrated fiber attachment.
• 8-tile 3D active interposer; die area "more than 4,000 square millimeters"; total package footprint 7,735 mm².
• 1,024 electrical SerDes at 56 Gbps NRZ modulation; 8-wavelength WDM transmission.
• 1.5 kW power delivery through the interposer.
• World's first built-in solid-state optical circuit switching on the interposer.
• Built on GF Fotonix (GlobalFoundries silicon photonics + CMOS logic in a single die); packaged by Amkor.
• Availability: "summer of 2025"; next-gen CPO for future XPUs expected 2026.

CEO Nick Harris: "Passage M1000 is a breakthrough achievement in photonics and semiconductor packaging for AI infrastructure."

Relevance to KB

Extends the Lightmatter entity beyond the L200 interconnect to the interposer-scale M-series, and deepens Photonic Interconnects and Co-Packaged Optics with the active-interposer + on-package optical-switching architecture — a distinct architectural axis from chiplet-style CPO (Ayar Labs TeraPHY, TSMC COUPE).

Notes

Originally announced March 31 2025; the M-series was re-surfaced as Lightmatter's flagship at Computex 2026 (paired with the L200), which is what brought it into scope for this refresh. New to the KB.