Serenity analyzes AMD’s MI500 and CPO roadmap: A clear commitment to optical interconnects would be an industry-wide positive development.

AMD will host its Advancing AI event in San Francisco from July 22 to 23, where more details about its MI500 series GPUs and scale-up Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) roadmap are set to be unveiled. In response to community queries, Serenity noted that if AMD explicitly commits to a CPO solution and discloses its optical engine supplier at the event, it will be a major positive for the entire CPO ecosystem—meaning NVIDIA is no longer the sole player driving the optical interconnect transition. Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis currently expects AMD to partner with Astera Labs on UAL and Broadcom on ESUN, but the key watchpoint is whether AMD will officially shift to a CPO-based scale-up design and who will supply the optical engine. Serenity added that a clearer supply chain picture will only emerge after the event (held Wednesday and Thursday), so conclusions are premature for now. For Sivers, its supply chain ties to AMD’s CPO plans can only be inferred indirectly at present: first, GlobalFoundries (GF) is rumored to be involved in AMD’s MI500 CPO work, and Sivers is GF’s reference laser supplier; second, AMD has previously invested in Ayar Labs. If AMD confirms at the event that it will use Ayar Labs or GF’s SCALE as the optical engine for the MI500 CPO, it will be a massive boost for Sivers, which holds a core role as an upstream laser and reference laser supplier in both potential paths. The upcoming MI500 is expected to adopt a native UAL scale-up architecture, supporting 256 GPUs per rack and interconnected via optical links. Sivers has been steadily securing positions across multiple tech tracks this year, including CPO, pluggable optical modules, and silicon photonics. If AMD’s event confirms Sivers’ indirect entry into the supply chain, it will further validate the company’s full-scenario layout logic in the optical interconnect sector.