(Source: Financial News)

Researchers from SK Hynix, Virginia Tech, MIT, UIUC, Nanyang Technological University, Yonsei University, and other institutions, published a CPO (co-packaged optics) paper in a top-tier journal (Nature? Electronics). This is also the company’s first time to publicly disclose an AI interconnection system–level technical blueprint at this level of journal.

On August 21, the super-node concept surged and rebounded sharply; Risecomda (603803.SH) hit the daily limit in a straight move. StarNet Ruijie (002396.SZ), Corelink Technology (603118.SH), Tsinghua Unisplendour (000938.SZ), and PhyLink Cos (301191.SZ) also followed with gains.

On the news front, SK hynix, together with researchers from institutions including the University of Virginia, MIT, UIUC, Nanyang Technological University, and Yonsei University, published a CPO (co-packaged optics) paper in top-tier journals (Nature Electronics). This is also the company’s first time to publicly release a system-level technical blueprint for AI interconnection at this level of journal.

The paper points out that while HBM addresses the internal memory bottleneck of chips, when an AI cluster scales to thousands of GPUs, data transmission at the rack/pod level creates a “bandwidth wall.” Traditional copper cabling is constrained by power consumption and signal attenuation, making it difficult to continuously scale up. CPO is seen as the key to breaking the deadlock. In the short term, CPO focuses on optical signal transmission between processors and racks. In the long term, it proposes an “optics-centric” architecture, using a photonic interposer layer to directly connect a compute resource pool and a memory resource pool, extending optical interconnects to memory interfaces. This enables multiple AI accelerators to share a large-capacity memory pool and breaks through physical limitations imposed by packaging.

Meanwhile, SK hynix is seeking to build a storage-chip manufacturing plant in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. This would be the first major investment by a Korean chipmaker to establish a production base in Japan, with the investment amount potentially reaching tens of trillions of won. SK hynix responded accordingly, saying that any location with the necessary infrastructure could be considered a candidate, but no decision has been made yet.