The Connectivity Broker for the AI Era: AlphaWave Semi
High speed connectivity is an often-overlooked element of building a sound strategy for AI training and inference at scale. AI supercomputers, built on the architectural foundations of high-performance computing, rely on masses of interconnected servers functioning as one logical system and sharing work across nodes towards a common objective. NVIDIA saw this key technology as a strategic element of their strategy when purchasing Mellanox and integrating InfiniBand into their silicon portfolio. But where does that leave other silicon logic players and customers that want another solution outside of NVIDIA’s InfiniBand solutions? Enter Alphawave Semi, a silicon leader known for connectivity solutions from high-performance IP to custom silicon and chiplet delivery. Alphawave has engaged with the TechArena in the past to discuss their broader portfolio, but I was delighted to talk to their CTO, Tony Chan Carusone, at the AI HW and Edge Summit in Santa Clara last week to discuss their strategy and what they’re seeing in the market as AI adoption broadens across cloud service providers and into the enterprise.
There are a few key trends to look at when considering AI infrastructure adoption. The first is that AI is calling for customers to consider alternative architectures and in doing so adopt a CPU + Accelerator strategy for compute capability. Customers are also becoming savvier at considering custom solutions with adoption extending more broadly than the historic confines of the world’s largest cloud players. Finally, chiplet architectures are shifting from something that large silicon providers deliver as proprietary to those that are enabled by an industry standard such as the Universal Chiplet Interconnect ExpressTM. All of these trends support Alphawave Semi’s business strategy and position them well for growth. This started with Alphawave’s leadership in connectivity IP, followed by their acquisition of OpenFive which completed last year. This acquisition of custom silicon capabilities and interface IP has transformed the company into a vertically integrated semiconductor supplier, and nearly doubled Alphawave Semi’s connectivity IP portfolio across 5nm, 4nm and 3nm solutions at the time with key technology squarely focused at AI requirements.
Alphawave Semi adds to this with their “spec-to-silicon” engineering prowess to deliver application-optimized chiplet-enabled custom silicon configurations for customers. Blending up to 112Gb SerDes, PCIe Gen6.0, CXL3.0, HBM 3.0, and power-performance-area optimized Arm and RISC-V processor subsystems as examples, the company can deliver the leading-edge SOCs to their hyperscaler and data infrastructure customers, that are needed to keep pace with the surge in data-intensive applications like generative AI. Moreover, their deep industry experience, key partnerships and ecosystem collaborations provide confidence in moving from ideation to custom solution delivery with speed.
Where things get really interesting to me is with the advent of open chiplet configurations as this accelerates Alphawave IP into heterogeneous solutions. Tony Carusone noted that Alphawave Semi has positioned itself well for this broader industry trend being on the foundations of industry standards setting and building technology prowess with things like advanced 2.5D packaging that will enable Alphawave Semi to work with other industry leaders as a connectivity chiplet supplier.
When one considers the strong demand for alternative AI silicon in the market, an independent supplier like Alphawave Semi becomes even more interesting as they collaborate with multiple vendors to deliver core connectivity capabilities in the most advanced process nodes. Moreover, their customers can be assured that their custom chip and chiplet solutions remain proprietary. As Tony stated in our conversation, “Just the ability, to leverage our industry leading connectivity IP and silicon offerings across the full spectrum of solutions allows us the flexibility to work with some of the biggest players in AI and meet them wherever they're at to help them solve problems in whatever way makes most sense for their specific AI workloads and applications.” In my view, this summarizes why Alphawave Semi is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the massive growth in AI infrastructure deployments expected over the next several years. Watch this space for more updates regarding Alphawave, connectivity, and the demands for more silicon capability to fully unleash the power of AI.