Volantis Raises $88M to Use iPhone Laser Tech for AI Chips
- San Francisco-based semiconductor startup Volantis said it has raised $88 million in venture capital on Thursday to connect AI and memory chips using laser technology already found in...
- The fundamental limit for AI chips is the communication speed between computing processors and the high-bandwidth memory chips that feed them data.
- While sophisticated packaging demands serious attention and is far from simple, it is not an entirely unprecedented practice.
San Francisco-based semiconductor startup Volantis said it has raised $88 million in venture capital on Thursday to connect AI and memory chips using laser technology already found in hundreds of millions of iPhones, according to channelnewsasia.com. The company aims to solve the primary hardware bottleneck for artificial intelligence processors built by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.
Volantis Uses Laser Light to Increase Memory Chip Capacity
The fundamental limit for AI chips is the communication speed between computing processors and the high-bandwidth memory chips that feed them data. Nvidia and AMD currently surround their graphics processing units with expensive high-bandwidth memory chips. However, tiny electrical wires limit Nvidia’s best current offerings to holding only eight memory chips per GPU. Volantis is developing a method to send data between computing and memory chips using beams of laser light. This optical approach eliminates the physical reach problem, allowing a GPU to pack 220 memory chips around it.
To achieve this, Volantis utilizes vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, known as VCSELs. These components power facial recognition features in many Apple devices, which heavily invested in bolstering the underlying supply chain over the past decade. By employing these existing components, Volantis intends to avoid supply chain bottlenecks in AI chip development, according to Tapa Ghosh, CEO and co-founder of Volantis.
While sophisticated packaging demands serious attention and is far from simple, it is not an entirely unprecedented practice.
Tapa Ghosh
Success with our endeavor will not earn anyone a Nobel Prize, though fortunately, such recognition will be unnecessary.
Tapa Ghosh
Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures Lead Funding Round
Stripe veteran Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures led the $88 million funding round. John Doerr, an early backer of Google and Amazon.com, also participated in the financing. Additional participants include VXI Capital, Triatomic, and Susa Ventures. The investment round features angel contributions from AI podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, AI chip veteran Naveen Rao, and Anthropic researcher Sholto Douglas.
Product Delivery Schedule
Volantis plans to deliver its new chip next year to accelerate tasks such as AI coding.