EV Group has laid out how its wafer-bonding and lithography equipment fits into the manufacturing of co-packaged optics, a chip-packaging approach that hyperscale data-center operators are turning to as electrical wiring struggles to keep AI systems supplied with data.
The bottleneck is physical. As AI accelerators move more traffic between chips, the copper wiring that carries their electrical signals runs into limits on bandwidth, power draw, and signal quality over distance. Co-packaged optics, usually shortened to CPO, moves the components that convert electrical signals into light much closer to the processor. Photonic circuits, lasers, and light-guiding structures sit inside the same package as the compute silicon.
That proximity is also what makes the parts hard to build. The photonic and electronic pieces are made from different materials that respond differently to heat and handling during fabrication. Packing them together at higher densities calls for assembly steps that mainstream chip packaging does not routinely use.
That gap is where EV Group positions its equipment. According to EV Group, the bonding and lithography systems that chipmakers already use to stack and align wafers carry over to photonic assembly. The company plans to detail its approach at SEMICON Taiwan on September 4.
From there the claims get more specific. EV Group says hybrid bonding can join photonic and electronic chips with minimal electrical loss. Fusion bonding, by its account, attaches the III-V compound semiconductors used for on-chip lasers, since silicon is a poor light emitter, along with newer optical materials such as thin-film lithium niobate. Room-temperature bonding adds heat spreaders like diamond and silicon carbide. Nanoimprint lithography stamps the fine grating structures that steer light between chips and optical fibers. None of this has been tested independently, and the company has not named the customers involved.
EV Group runs two facilities, the NILPhotonics Competence Center and the Heterogeneous Integration Competence Center, where it says customers can validate designs and production steps before committing to high-volume manufacturing. "Co-packaged optics represents a major technology transition for AI hardware, but it also introduces significant integration challenges," said Bernd Dielacher, EV Group's director of business development.
What the announcement does not include is a product, an order, or a schedule. EV Group has not linked its co-packaged optics work to a specific tool or a named customer, and the technology itself is still moving from pilot lines into volume production across the chip industry. What is still unclear is how much of that assembly flow has been proven at scale, and that is the question its conference talk will need to address.
