Serenity Analyzes AMD MI500 and CPO Roadmap: Explicit Commitment to Optical Interconnect Could Be Industry Game Changer

BlockBeats News, July 21st. AMD will hold the Advancing AI event in San Francisco on July 22nd to 23rd, where they are expected to reveal more details about the MI500 series GPU and scale-up CPO roadmap. Serenity noted in response to community questions that if AMD explicitly commits to the CPO scheme at the event and discloses the optical engine supplier, it will be a positive development for the entire CPO theme—indicating that the push for optical interconnect transformation will no longer be exclusive to just NVIDIA.

Currently, Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis anticipates that AMD will collaborate with Astera Labs on UAL and with Broadcom on ESUN. However, the key point of interest is whether AMD will formally shift to a CPO-based scale-up scheme and who will supply the optical engine. Serenity believes that a clearer supply chain readout will only be available after the event on Wednesday or Thursday, so it is premature to draw conclusions at this time.

For Sivers, supply chain associations can currently only be inferred through an indirect path: first, Gridcore is rumored to be involved in AMD's MI500 CPO work, and Sivers is its referenced laser supplier; second, AMD has previously invested in Ayar Labs. If AMD discloses during the event that they will specifically use Ayar Labs or Gridcore SCALE as the MI500 CPO optical engine solution, it will be a significant positive for Sivers—being a core player in both paths as an upstream laser and referenced laser supplier. The upcoming MI500 is expected to shift to a native UAL scale-up architecture, with each rack supporting 256 GPUs interconnected through optical links. Sivers has been strategically positioned in various technological paths such as CPO, pluggable optical modules, and silicon photonics this year. If this AMD event confirms its indirect entry into the supply chain, it will further validate its comprehensive strategic layout in the field of optical interconnect.