NTT and partners to develop optical chiplet as part of Japanese R&D project - Telecompaper

NTT's optical chiplet initiative is less an R&D project than a strategic reclassification of photonics as a national security asset, echoing Tokyo's 1980s play on semiconductor materials. The technical implication is blunt: modularizing optical functions into chiplets directly undermines Broadcom's integrated DSP-plus-optics moat. Upstream, InP and SiPh waveguide substrates plus 2.5D packaging demand shift earlier in the supply chain. Downstream, AI clusters beyond 1.6T have no viable path except CPO, and chiplets are the building blocks that make CPO manufacturable. Geopolitically, Japan is constructing a de-TSMC heterogeneous integration backup, reducing single-source exposure in advanced packaging. Competitively, Coherent and Lumentum control laser supply while Innolight and Eoptolink scale transceiver volume; Japan's modular approach attacks the integrated model from a different axis. Within 24 months, expect OIF and IEEE to lock optical chiplet interface standards. The real disruption is not the die itself but the decoupling of optical function from the transceiver module, which rewrites the data center BOM and pressures pure-play module vendors' valuation theses.