Skip to main content

Semtech

Menu

Frequently Asked Questions

AI Data Center Power & Performance

Why is power the next critical constraint for AI data centers?
Hardware infrastructure uses >10% of its energy moving data rather than computing it. At the same time, larger AI clusters need more data to move between more components at higher speeds. As AI infrastructure rapidly scales, the massive volume of data movement means increased power usage. Improving the energy efficiency of that data movement can help data centers increase performance while freeing up power for additional compute resources.

AI relies on data to produce reliable outputs. This means constantly moving data between accelerators, memory, switches, racks and clusters. If that data cannot move quickly and efficiently, it limits the ability of compute resources to generate useful insights. Increasing training and inference workload sizes drive larger clusters which in turn means more interconnects. AI performance and infrastructure efficiency rely on high-performance connectivity.

As connection speeds increase, signals become more difficult to transmit reliably. Loss, noise, and other impairments can reduce performance unless those signals are carefully amplified and conditioned. Semtech’s high-performance analog technology helps preserve signal integrity so data can move reliably at the speeds next-generation AI infrastructure requires.
It means increasing the amount of information a connection can carry while improving the energy efficiency of that data movement. For Semtech, that means applying high-performance analog expertise to help customers increase bandwidth, maintain signal integrity and reduce the power required to connect increasingly complex AI systems.

Adding compute multiplies the connections between processors. Those connections must operate at higher speeds while maintaining signal integrity, power, and heat. As a result, connectivity becomes an increasingly important part of the overall AI system and a larger opportunity for technologies that improve its performance and efficiency.

Semtech’s Role in AI Data Centers

Where does Semtech fit in the AI data center?

Semtech operates in the high-performance analog connectivity layer that helps move data between compute resources. Its technologies support both copper and optical links, helping amplify, condition, transmit, and receive high-speed signals while addressing the power and signal-integrity challenges created by increasingly complex AI infrastructure.

AI is driving larger clusters, more connections and higher data rates, increasing demand for efficient data movement across the data center. Semtech is expanding its high-performance analog portfolio across copper and optical connectivity to help customers deliver more bandwidth with less power, positioning its technologies across a growing portion of next-generation AI infrastructure.

Semtech partners with customers early in the design process to understand their architectures, performance, power requirements, and future roadmaps. That allows its engineering teams to develop technologies around real system requirements, and customers accelerate innovation.

Higher data rates are more technically challenging and increases the demand for and value of high-performance analog connections. Building on decades of specialized IC design experience in analog connectivity, Semtech is expanding its product portfolio to provide more solutions in next-generation copper and optical links as computational demands increase. No matter how and when the market evolves, Semtech is positioned to win.

Semtech combines decades of specialized, high-speed analog expertise with an increasingly customer-driven development model. The company focuses on solving difficult connectivity problems around bandwidth, power, and signal integrity, while customers in the design phase to develop technologies that emerging architectures require.

Semtech's Connectivity Portfolio & Architecture

Why are both copper and optical connectivity important in AI data centers?

Copper and optical links serve different needs based on distance, bandwidth, power, cost, and system architecture. Copper can be highly power and cost efficient for shorter connections, while optical connectivity is essential as distance and bandwidth requirements increase. By providing both, Semtech gives data center architects greater flexibility as the market needs evolve. No matter how and when the market evolves, Semtech is positioned to win.

Semtech’s expanding portfolio includes technologies such as transimpedance amplifiers, laser drivers, linear redrivers, gain chips, semiconductor optical amplifiers, high-speed photodiodes and continuous-wave lasers. Together, these technologies allow Semtech to address more of the analog connectivity chain across copper and optical infrastructure. 

FiberEdge and DirectEdge address high-speed optical connectivity, including technologies used to transmit and receive data over fiber. CopperEdge addresses high-speed electrical connectivity, using technologies like linear redrivers to help maintain signal integrity across copper links.

GainCore provides key building blocks for coherent optical transport links in scale-across networks.

LambdaCore and PhotoCore enable intra-data center high-speed optical connectivity with high-performance photonic devices.

Semtech has built a diverse portfolio that covers evolving connectivity needs in AI infrastructure.

As AI networks increase in speed and scale, optical connectivity becomes increasingly important for moving data over longer distances and between more systems. Expanding into areas such as lasers, photodiodes and optical amplification gives Semtech the ability to participate in more of the optical signal path and increase the breadth of its offering.

Semtech is developing technologies for current and next-generation data rates, including the industry’s progression from 800G to 1.6T and 3.2T connectivity and beyond. As speeds increase, maintaining signal integrity and controlling power become more challenging, increasing the value of Semtech’s high-performance analog technology.

Disclosures

Where can I find important information about the forward-looking statements on this site?

Statements on this site about Semtech’s market position, growth opportunities, and future performance are forward-looking statements. They reflect management’s current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please consider them together with the “Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements” in Semtech’s earnings releases and the risk factors in its SEC filings, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 25, 2026, filed with the SEC on March 23, 2026, as such risk factors may be amended, supplemented or superseded by later SEC reports. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and except as required by law, Semtech assumes no obligation to update them.

Certain financial measures discussed on this site are non-GAAP. They supplement, and should not be considered a substitute for, measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, and they may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. Definitions of these measures, the items they exclude, and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in Semtech’s earnings releases, available at investors.semtech.com. Semtech does not provide reconciliations of forward-looking non-GAAP measures because the information needed is not available without unreasonable effort.