A data infrastructure semiconductor company Marvell Technology, Inc. announced that it has reached a final deal to buy Celestial AI, a pioneer of a disruptive Photonic Fabric technology platform designed specifically for scale-up optical connection.
This strategic purchase represents a revolutionary milestone in boosting the company’s networking strategy for next-generation AI and cloud data centers.
Data center architectures are changing at a rate never seen before due to AI. Next-generation accelerated systems are growing into multi-rack configurations that connect hundreds of XPUs with an integrated high-bandwidth, ultra-low latency, any-to-any scale-up fabric.
These systems are no longer limited to a single rack. This architecture allows each XPU to access the memory of every other XPU directly. These advanced fabrics demand purpose-built switches and protocols such as UALink, developed to give the performance and efficiency required at scale.
Interconnects will gradually switch to all-optical connections due to the power, bandwidth, latency, and reach requirements of multi-rack scale-up fabrics. Marvell can now spearhead this technological transition and acquire a novel semiconductor TAM for optical interconnects thanks to this purchase.
Combined with existing leadership in scale-out and scale-across connection, Marvell hopes this extended portfolio will result in the industry’s most comprehensive provider of high-bandwidth, low-power, low-latency solutions for next-generation data center connectivity.
“The acquisition of Celestial AI is a transformative step in Marvell’s evolution and expands our leadership in AI connectivity, as scale-up becomes the next frontier in AI infrastructure,”
said Matt Murphy, Chairman and CEO of Marvell.
“This builds on our technology leadership, broadens our addressable market in scale-up connectivity, and accelerates our roadmap to deliver the industry’s most complete connectivity platform for AI and cloud customers.”
“AI infrastructure is transforming faster than ever, and the future demands scale-up fabrics that deliver unprecedented bandwidth, power efficiency, and reach,”
said Sandeep Bharathi, President, Data Center Group.
“By combining our UALink scale-up switch roadmap and Celestial AI’s breakthrough optical scale-up interconnect, we will enable customers to build AI systems that scale beyond the limits of copper and redefine what’s possible in AI data center architecture.”
“At AWS, we aim to be at the forefront of major technology inflections, and we believe optical interconnects will play an important role in the future of AI infrastructure. Building a scalable, high-performance, and power-efficient cloud starts with an approach built upon differentiated technologies,”
said Dave Brown, Vice President of Compute and Machine Learning Services at AWS.
“Celestial AI has made impressive progress, and we expect their combination with a large-scale semiconductor company like Marvell will help further accelerate optical scale-up innovation for next-generation AI deployments.”