Companies commercialize scale manufacturability of 800G to 1.6T PICs in external pluggable and CPX MSA compliant NPO socket pluggable solutions built on PH18DA platform designed for high-density monolithic laser integration, SOAs, modulators and detectors

MIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel, and TEL AVIV, Israel, September 17, 2026 – Tower Semiconductor (NASDAQ/TASE: TSEM), the leading foundry for high-value analog semiconductor solutions, and NewPhotonics®, a fabless semiconductor delivering innovative photonic IC chip solutions, today announced high-volume shipment of laser-integrated serviceable optical engines designed to meet the urgent and growing demand for high-bandwidth, energy-efficient optical interconnects in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The PIC optical engine chips support OEM solutions ranging from FRO/LRO/LPO and Extra-Dense Packaged Optics (XPO) pluggable transceiver modules and Near-Packaged Optics (NPO) socket pluggable applications. Shipping volume production PICs today support data rates from 800G to 1.6T, with future volume manufacturing planned at 6.4T NPO solutions suitable for scale-out and scale-up architectures.

The collaboration leverages the high-volume PH18DA silicon photonics (SiPho) technology platform featuring heterogeneously integrated InP components enabling monolithic integration of lasers, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), modulators, and photodetectors on a single photonic integrated circuit. This highly integrated, optical-domain focused approach reduces complexity and manufacturing variability to supply better yield, reliability, and time-to-market with a leading-edge photonic device.

Volume shipment of NewPhotonics NPG102 PIC products for 800G and 1.6T feature 200G-per-lane designs and heterogeneously integrated lasers on a monolithic PIC enable customers to leverage optical signal processing in a unified architecture that delivers power efficiency, bandwidth density, and manufacturing consistency. The CPX-MSA compliant NPC505 chipsets for 6.4T will begin volume shipment in 1H27.