Network and communications chips supplier Airoha Technology Corp (達發科技) on Tuesday said revenue from chips used in high-speed optical transceivers for data centers would triple this year, driven by global artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure buildout.
Airoha has strong confidence in digital signal processors (DSPs), given its better-than-expected shipments and a surge in sales in the first quarter, Airoha executive vice president M.H. Shieh (謝孟翰) said at an earnings conference.
The robust growth is expected to sustain throughout the year, thanks to replacement demand and systems upgrading to chips with higher speeds and wider bandwidths, Shieh said.
Photo courtesy of Airoha Technology Corp
The company plans to roll out new DSPs that can transmit 100 gigabits of data per second in the middle of this year, and is working on next-generation DSPs that can transmit 200 gigabits of data per second, he said.
Airoha expects DSPs and chips used in optical transceivers and chips used in satellites and AI data centers to account for a high single-digit percentage of its total revenue this year, from a low-single-digit percentage last year, Shieh said.
While Nvidia Corp plans to adopt copackaged optics (CPO) technology for new AI servers, Airoha believes DSP-based pluggable optical transceivers remain the mainstream solution for AI data center operators, given their operating flexibility, signal reliability and better total ownership costs, he said.
By 2030, pluggable optical transceivers powered by 400 gigabit to 1.6 terabit DSPs would remain the top choice of cloud service providers, he added.
The two technologies are complementary, rather than competitive, Shieh said.
DSP-based solutions are suitable for “scaling out” data transmission and connectivity between servers within a large-scale AI data center, while CPO is good at “scaling up” a server rack, he said.
In the first quarter, Airoha’s revenue rose 4.4 percent annually and 20 percent quarterly to NT$5.46 billion (US$173.4 million).
DSPs, Ethernet chips and broadband chips accounted for about half of Airoha’s total revenue, with wireless chips such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips contributing to the other half.
Net profit grew 2.5 percent year-on-year and 34.8 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$748 million.
Earnings per share rose to NT$4.47 from NT$4.36 a year ago and NT$3.32 the previous quarter.
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