Tower Semi and Semtech extend SiGe partnership
Tower Semiconductor and Semtech have announced an expanded multi-year agreement under which Semtech will invest in securing dedicated SiGe capacity at Tower for AI data centre optical interconnect components. The agreement builds on the companies’ existing 20-year partnership.
AI’s next constraint is power, and a growing share of that power is spent moving data rather than computing it. As AI clusters scale across racks, rows and campuses, the energy cost of moving each bit is becoming central to how much useful work each accelerator can deliver. Each step in the speed roadmap, from 800G to 1.6T and on to 3.2T, raises the requirements for bandwidth, reach and power per bit, and increases the importance of the high-speed analogue front end that drives and receives the signal.
Semtech’s signal integrity portfolio, including transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs), modulator and laser drivers and linear equalisers, is built on Tower’s SiGe process technology. It serves fully retimed optics (FRO), linear pluggable optics (LPO), linear receive optics (LRO), near-packaged optics (NPO), eXtra-dense pluggable optics (XPO), linear equalisers on PCB and active copper cables (ACC).
The company recently won an Optical Component Innovation (Chip/Wafer) award at ECOC 2026 recognising its 224 Gbps per Lane TIA Family for Linear Pluggable Optics built on Tower’s SiGe technology.
Tower and Semtech say they are working closely not only on capacity but also on joint technology roadmap designed to secure product leadership in multi-generational AI data centre interconnects.
The secured capacity spans Tower’s fabs in the United States, Israel and Japan.
