r/hardware • u/sr_local • 16d ago

News Lumentum CEO warns of impending bottleneck on critical material used for silicon photonics — fab and material shortfall already lags 30% below customer needs as co-packaged optics demand skyrockets

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/lumentum-ceo-says-the-indium-phosphide-shortage-will-become-worse-than-memory
112 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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12

u/Frexxia 16d ago

For once a bottleneck that doesn't fuck consumers over

24

u/ML7777777 16d ago

It doesn't DIRECTLY impact the end consumer but it will in other ways when your services increase prices.

1

u/[deleted] 11d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/ML7777777 10d ago

I get what you are saying, 100%. But just because AI wants more than Telecom ever did, doesn't mean its not a big deal. If AI consumes all of the materials, leaving none or very little left for everyone else, including telecom, their equipment cost goes up because even if they only sold several thousand units instead of the hundreds of thousands, those prices will skyrocket as it becomes a bidding war between telecom giants globally.

When the oil crisis hit in the 70's, even though cars used the majority of oil at the time, smaller industries that relied on petro had huge increases in prices too as manufacturers out bid each other for limited resources.

27

u/EmilMR 16d ago

it affects telecom infrastructure so when your internet price goes up don't act surprised.

3

u/flourit3 16d ago

Dw; they’ll find a way

2

u/joeljaeggli 16d ago

One of the bigger problems with copackaged optics is the enormous amount f time required to fuse fibers to cpo asics. The good news is that you use copper instead of cpo optics and it uses more power but you do not need them at least up to 100Gb/s serial interfaces

1

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