Japan’s TDK is claiming a breakthrough in optical technology that will process data 10 times faster than today’s electronics, solving a key obstacle to the development of creative artificial intelligence.
The Apple supplier says it has demonstrated the world’s first “spin photo detector,” which combines optical, electronic and magnetic components to create response times of 20 picoseconds, or 20 trillionths of a second, potentially replacing existing semiconductor-based photo detectors that transfer data between chips.
Hideaki Fukuzawa, senior director of TDK’s next-generation product development center, said the speed at which artificial intelligence processors could transfer data was severely limited by existing electronics.
Arata Tsukamoto, a professor of electrical engineering at Nihon University in Tokyo, tested the new device for TDK as a research associate and said he believes “the rotary photodetector has remarkable prospects, both from a scientific and technological point of view.”
TDK and the Optical Revolution
Data is currently transferred between processors using electrical signals, but the high volumes in artificial intelligence require a shift to optical technology because light travels faster.
TDK plans further tests to confirm continuous light at extremely high speeds, before providing samples to customers by the end of March 2026 and starting mass production in the next three to five years.
Despite the immaturity of the technology and the great challenge of creating an ecosystem for the technology with integrated circuit designers, TDK believes its device could have a cost advantage over other solutions by reducing the number of chips needed.
TDK supplies batteries for the iPhone, but has adapted its magnetic head technology for hard disk drives to achieve the photonic breakthrough.
Its new device also uses less power — another key consideration in expanding AI data centers. Smart glasses for augmented and virtual reality and high-speed image sensors are also potential future markets for the technology.
The device is part of the photonics integrated circuit market, which is expected to expand more than tenfold over the next decade to $54.5 billion due to the demands of creative AI, according to forecasts from technology research group IDTechEx.
Major AI companies are also trying to develop transceivers that integrate optical technology into their chip packages, and TDK’s technology would be a challenge for such next-generation silicon photonics.
The world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, is ramping up the push, aiming for production within five years.
Nvidia also signaled the importance of solving data transfer bottlenecks when it paid $7 billion in 2020 to acquire Israel’s Mellanox Technologies, a company specializing in providing efficient connections between networks, systems and data centers.
