Qualcomm and Amazon Partner to Co-Develop Custom AI Chips and 1.6T Optical Interconnects
Qualcomm and Amazon have announced a multi-generational partnership to co-develop custom AI chips and 1.6T optical interconnect solutions for large-scale data center infrastructure. As part of the strategic agreement, Qualcomm issued Amazon warrants to acquire up to 25 million Qualcomm shares tied to commercial procurement commitments worth up to $60 billion. This partnership highlights the shifting AI hardware landscape, where cloud hyperscalers collaborate with established chipmakers to build custom silicon and reduce dependence on dominant GPU vendors like Nvidia. Developing 1.6T optical interconnects is also critical to eliminating networking bandwidth and energy bottlenecks in next-generation AI clusters. The 1.6T optical interconnect solutions will leverage Qualcomm's high-speed SerDes and optical DSP technologies to optimize bandwidth and power efficiency. Furthermore, Qualcomm will expand its use of AWS cloud infrastructure and Amazon Bedrock to run electronic design automation (EDA) workloads to accelerate its own chip design pipeline.
## BACKGROUND
As AI workloads expand exponentially, data centers require ultra-high-speed networking to handle traffic between massive compute nodes without creating bottlenecks. SerDes (Serializer/Deserializer) and optical Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) are core technologies used to convert and modulate digital data for high-speed transmission over fiber networks. 1.6T optical interconnects represent the next-generation standard, capable of transferring data at 1.6 Terabits per second to support large-scale AI clusters.