MediaTek plans to double data center spending

MediaTek Inc said yesterday it plans to double investment in data center related technologies including advanced packaging and high speed interconnect technologies. The world's biggest smartphone chip supplier made the announcement to broaden the new business customer and service portfolios. It is redirecting resources mainly to designing application specific integrated circuits with artificial intelligence capabilities for cloud service providers. President Joe Chen told a media event in Taipei that the data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years. The business is expected to become the company's second biggest revenue source replacing chips used in smart devices. The data center ASIC business would contribute 20 percent to the company's revenue next year. Chen said the company plans to invest heavily in critical technologies to optimize the total ownership of costs of AI data centers by enhancing the computing power of ASIC. MediaTek is allocating more resources to develop new advanced packaging technology in collaboration with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The collaboration includes co packaged opticals and silicon photonics technology under the foundry service provider's compact universal photonic engines platform. The company plans to roll out new high speed SerDes interface chips later this year with a data operating rate of 400 gigabits per second. Chen said MediaTek is pushing for adoption of next generation chip manufacturing process technologies including 2 nanometers and 14A or 1.4 nanometers. The firm will be a first wave customer of these advanced processes.