Tadayon to accelerate ecosystem development and scalability for high-volume delivery of in-package optical I/O for next-generation AI systems

Ayar Labs, the leader in optical interconnect solutions that move data at the speed of AI, today announced the appointment of Pooya Tadayon as its Vice President of Packaging and Test. Tadayon was formerly a Fellow and Director of Assembly & Test Pathfinding within Intel’s Assembly and Test Technology Development (ATTD) group.

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Pooya Tadayon, VP of Packaging and Test (Photo: Business Wire)

Tadayon brings to Ayar Labs more than two and a half decades of experience, with a recent focus on advanced packaging technologies, as well as assembly and test solutions for co-packaged optics that can scale to high volume. He holds 47 patents and has over three dozen pending, in areas including test interconnect technology, thermal technology, and package/product architecture.

“The demand for photonics technology is rapidly increasing to meet the bandwidth and energy requirements of AI,” said Tadayon. “My goal at Ayar Labs is to accelerate assembly and test ecosystem maturation to support the volumes being projected for optical I/O in AI connectivity.”

Tadayon will lead the creation of an efficient OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) process that will enable the photonics ecosystem and accelerate the adoption of Ayar Labs’ solutions.

“Pooya brings a strategic advantage to Ayar Labs with his deep expertise in solving complex packaging and testing challenges in large-scale, multi-die systems for high-volume manufacturing,” said Mark Wade, CEO and Co-Founder of Ayar Labs. “His pioneering work positions us to significantly increase production of our optical I/O solutions to millions of units of volume to meet the growing demand for AI scale-up fabrics."

The company partners with the world’s leading OSATs to ensure its optical I/O solutions can be manufactured at scale and integrated seamlessly into AI systems. In recent years, Ayar Labs has also made significant investments in hiring test, validation and equipment engineers, purchasing wafer testers, and developing a suite of tests for the optical and electrical interfaces of its chiplets.

The addition of Tadayon to Ayar Labs’ team builds on the company’s momentum in the first half of 2024, including the addition of industry veterans to the company’s Board of Directors and a new CTO to accelerate growth. At OFC 2024, Ayar Labs demonstrated their optical I/O solution with the industry’s first CW-WDM MSA-compliant 16-wavelength light source capable of driving 256 optical carriers to achieve 16 Tbps of bi-directional bandwidth – a level that’s essential for AI workloads.

Ayar Labs is currently hiring for a number of engineering and manufacturing operations roles. To learn more about these and other career opportunities with Ayar Labs, visit ayarlabs.com/careers.

About Ayar Labs

Ayar Labs is the leader in optical interconnect solutions that move data at the speed of AI. Recognizing that the complexity and size of AI models are increasing at a rate that traditional interconnect technology cannot handle, the company has developed the industry’s first optical I/O solution that enables customers to maximize the compute efficiency and performance of growing AI infrastructure, while reducing costs, latency and power consumption. Based on open standards and optimized for both AI training and inference, Ayar Labs’ optical I/O solution is backed by a robust ecosystem that enables it to integrate smoothly into AI systems at scale. Ayar Labs was founded in 2015 and is funded by domestic and international venture capital firms, as well as strategic investors including GlobalFoundries, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, Intel Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, and NVIDIA. For more information, visit www.ayarlabs.com

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