Credo announced the second generation of a 1.6 Tb/s optical digital signal processor (DSP) family designed to address the bandwidth, scale, and power requirements of massive AI clusters.

This family of three nanometer (nm), low‑power, highly integrated 224 Gb/s per lane optical DSPs, known as Cardinal, aims to meet the explosive bandwidth, latency, and reliability demands of modern AI compute fabrics.

AI compute clusters are challenging the limits of network infrastructure due to their need for high‑radix switches, dense GPU topologies, and massive east‑west traffic patterns. These environments demand maximum bandwidth per watt, low error rates, and robust monitoring.

The new Cardinal family of devices include low-power, high-swing integrated electro-absorption modulated laser (EML) and silicon photonics drivers, and dedicated DSPs for full-retimed and linear receive optics applications.

“AI fabrics have shifted the center of gravity for optical design, and Cardinal was developed from day one with those unique requirements in mind,” Chris Collins, AVP of sales and optical product marketing at Credo, explained.

Credo last September unveiled its Bluebird DSP to power 1.6 Tb/s optical transceivers while consuming less energy than existing solutions. It's targeted at the bottleneck in AI infrastructure of moving data between GPUs at speeds fast enough to support advanced AI model training and inference.

According to Credo, rival 1.6 Tb/s transceivers typically consume more than 20 watts of power, creating cooling and power delivery challenges that limit their deployment in data centers. The firm claims the Bluebird DSP reduces power consumption to under 20 watts while maintaining ultra-low latency below 40 nanoseconds.

Credo last year settled a dispute with electronic connector manufacturer Amphenol over patents relating to active electrical cables (AECs). Credo called on the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) to investigate the group of companies earlier in 2025, but dropped its dispute with Amphenol after the pair reached a licensing and a settlement agreement.