Episode 76:

GlobalFoundries VP on Optical for Data Center Scale-Up

Date: Oct 12, 2026

AI has fundamentally changed the data center interconnect market. This is especially true for interconnect for Scale-Up (connectivity within the rack).

In this Episode, I talk to Thomas Barber of GlobalFoundries about the evolution of the data center interconnect landscape, how quickly the speed and latency requirements within racks are increasing, from 200 Gbps to 1.6 Tbps and beyond, how optical connectivity is fast becoming a basic need: the “Copper where you can and optical where you must” approach, evolution from today’s optical pluggable to Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) and more.

We also explore the role of a foundry like GlobalFoundries in CPO, its SCALE OCI CPO Module, the proprietary vs. standard-based solutions dilemma in the optical scale-up space, and what’s next.