Goodbye to Copper in Servers: NVIDIA Signs a Steel Pact with Corning on Optical Connectivity

NVIDIA and Corning have announced the signing of a multi-year commercial and technological agreement aimed at substantially boosting the U.S. production of high-performance optical connectivity solutions, considered an increasingly critical component for computing infrastructures dedicated to artificial intelligence.

As part of the agreement, Corning commits to multiplying its optical connectivity production capacity on American soil by tenfold and to increasing its optical fiber capacity by over 50% to meet the growing demand generated by the construction of new "AI Factories." The plan includes the establishment of three new advanced manufacturing plants in the states of North Carolina and Texas, with an estimated creation of over 3,000 new high-skill jobs.

Modern artificial intelligence workloads require the use of thousands of interconnected NVIDIA GPUs within data centers, and the amount of data to be transferred between chips has brought the physical limits of traditional copper increasingly into focus. Optical fiber, which uses photons instead of electrons, allows for data transfers at higher speeds and with energy consumption between five and twenty times lower compared to copper cables, according to estimates provided by Corning itself.

The direction NVIDIA is heading towards is that of co-packaged optics (CPO), which involves integrating the light-electricity conversion process directly near the chip. In this scheme, optical fiber aims to progressively replace copper cables within AI racks, such as those of the Vera Rubin platform, which currently contains about 5,000. Reducing the distance traveled by the signal to just a few millimeters, instead of across the entire board, further reduces energy losses and improves signal stability.

Corning is primarily known to the public as the manufacturer of Apple's smartphone protective glasses, but the optical communications business represents its largest and fastest-growing segment. The company is working with various semiconductor manufacturers on "glass core" technology for processor packaging, where glass could be integrated directly into the physical structure of next-generation chips.

NVIDIA's move is not isolated. In March, the company had already announced an overall investment of $4 billion in two companies specializing in the development of lasers and optical-electrical signal conversion components - Coherent and Lumentum - which operate upstream in the chain compared to Corning.