News: LEDs
17 September 2026
Avicena to demo first connectorized micro-LED optical interconnect
On stand 1365 during the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2026) exhibition at the Palacio de Ferias y Congresos de Málaga (FYCMA), Spain (21–23 September), Avicena Tech Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA is demonstrating what it claims is the industry’s first connectorized micro-LED optical interconnect.
The new LightBundle eKit implementation combines Avicena’s high-density, laser-free micro-LED transceiver technology with an inline detachable optical interface, providing a practical path to assembling, testing, servicing and upgrading optical connectivity in next-generation AI systems.
Picture: First connectorized micro-LED optical interconnect.
The announcement builds on Avicena’s recent shipment of the world’s first 1Tbps micro-LED optical interconnect evaluation kits. Those systems incorporate as many as 335 independent micro-LED data channels operating at up to 3Gbps per channel coupled through Avicena’s multi-core fiber technology to integrated photodetector arrays. The connector uses an industry-standard MPO form factor combined with a ferrule optimized for multi-core fiber bundles.
By adding a connectorized optical interface, Avicena is advancing the LightBundle technology platform to meet the critical deployment requirements of AI infrastructure.
Bringing serviceable optical connectivity closer to the silicon
Avicena notes that artificial intelligence systems require rapidly increasing bandwidth between XPUs, memory, network interfaces, and switch fabrics. As these systems scale, conventional copper interconnects face growing limitations in reach, routing density, signal integrity, and energy efficiency.
Optics can overcome copper’s reach limitations, but conventional optical technologies based on lasers and silicon photonics can introduce significant power, thermal, cost, packaging, and reliability challenges — particularly when optical connectivity must be placed close to high-performance compute and memory silicon, adds the firm.
LightBundle replaces lasers with dense arrays of micro-LED transmitters coupled through multi-core fiber to integrated photodetector arrays. Its wide-and-slow architecture distributes bandwidth across hundreds of low-power optical channels, enabling high aggregate throughput without requiring the extremely high per-lane speeds and complex signal processing associated with conventional optical links.
The new connectorized implementation adds the modularity required for practical system integration. A detachable optical interface can simplify system assembly, enable independent testing of electronic and optical subsystems, improve field serviceability, and support flexible routing between packages, boards, trays and racks.
“Introducing the world’s first connectorized micro-LED optical interconnect marks an important step in moving micro-LED connectivity from breakthrough technology to a deployable platform for AI infrastructure,” says CEO Marco Chisari. “Following the shipment of our 1Tbps LightBundle evaluation kits, we are now demonstrating how the same fundamental architecture can be implemented with the modularity and serviceability required by system manufacturers,” he adds. “This advancement further extends Avicena’s leadership and brings energy-efficient, terabit-class optical connectivity closer to broad deployment across XPU-to-XPU, XPU-to-memory, XPU-to-CPU, and XPU-to-switch applications.”
Designed for AI scale-in and scale-up
LightBundle is designed to support optical connectivity across both scale-in and scale-up architectures, including:
- die-to-die and die-to-memory connectivity within or between packages;
- XPU-to-XPU and XPU-to-CPU interconnects;
- XPU-to-memory and memory-disaggregation architectures;
- XPU-to-switch and NIC-to-switch connectivity;
- board-to-board, tray-to-tray, and rack-to-rack links
The platform’s integrated micro-LED and photodetector arrays are designed for low-power operation, high bandwidth density, robust performance at elevated temperatures, and flexible reach beyond the practical limits of high-speed copper.
Unlike laser-based architectures, LightBundle does not require external lasers, wavelength stabilization, optical modulators, or complex wavelength-division multiplexing. The architecture is also designed to integrate with a broad range of semiconductor processes and packaging approaches, allowing optical connectivity to be placed closer to compute, memory, and switching silicon.
“Adopting a new interconnect technology requires customers to understand how it will be manufactured, assembled, and serviced in their systems,” comments Ben Bajarin, CEO & principal analyst of Creative Strategies. “Avicena’s work on a connectorized interface addresses an important part of that challenge and is a necessary step toward making micro-LED interconnect technology practical for AI infrastructure, where customers have different requirements for bandwidth, power, and system design.”
Live demonstration at ECOC
At ECOC, Avicena is demonstrating a live inline connectorized LightBundle eKit link operating between micro-LED transmitter and integrated photodetector arrays. The demonstration will highlight:
- detachment and reconnection of the optical interface;
- real-time data transmission across the connectorized link;
- high-density parallel connectivity through multicore fiber;
- link performance and bit-error-rate monitoring;
- compact fiber routing for space-constrained AI systems;
- reliable operation without lasers or optical modulators.
Avicena is engaging with hyperscalers, AI accelerator companies, memory manufacturers, networking companies, system OEMs, and packaging partners to evaluate LightBundle implementations for future AI infrastructure.
Organizations interested in evaluating the technology or discussing system integration can contact Avicena at nigel@avicena.tech
Avicena’s LightBundle technology tightly integrates micro-LED transmitters, silicon photodetectors, purpose-built silicon transceivers, and multi-core fiber to deliver laser-free optical connectivity with low power, high reliability, scalability, and high bandwidth density. LightBundle is designed to help semiconductor and data-center innovators overcome the limitations of copper and build the next generation of AI scale-in and scale-up systems.
