Ayar Labs Adds Senior Professionals in Silicon Industry to Accelerate Growth

Recently, Ayar Labs, the silicon optical leader in the chip to chip connectivity field, announced the addition of two new members to its board of directors. Ganesh Moorthy, President and CEO of Microchip Technology Inc., and Craig Barratt, former CEO of Atheros and current Chairman of the Intuitive Surgical Board, will join the company’s board of directors. The company also announced that co-founder Vladimir Stojanovic has been appointed as the Chief Technology Officer.
CEO Mark Wade said, “Ganesh, Craig, and Vladimir are important members of our team, each of whom will play a crucial role in our technology’s maturation process. Their rich knowledge and experience will help us accelerate the implementation of Roadmap leadership and provide transformative value for optical I/O in artificial intelligence systems, high-performance computing, and next-generation data center system architectures.”

Moorthy has over 40 years of executive leadership and experience in the semiconductor industry. In addition to serving as the President and CEO of Microchip Technology, Moorthy also serves as a board member of the Semiconductor Industry Association, Global Semiconductor Alliance, Rogers Corporation, and Celanese Corporation. Previously, he held multiple senior leadership positions at Intel.
Ganesh Moorthy said, “The work done by Ayar Labs to achieve optical I/O is crucial for the progress of the entire industry. By addressing the performance and power consumption bottlenecks of traditional power interconnections, Ayar Labs will help unleash the full potential of all aspects, from artificial intelligence and 6G networks to decomposed data centers. As the company enters the next stage of development, I look forward to helping Ayar Labs expand its influence throughout the entire ecosystem.”

Barratt has had a remarkable career as a technology entrepreneur and board member. As the CEO of Atheros, he successfully completed the company’s IPO and ultimately sold Atheros to Qualcomm for $3.1 billion. He also served as the CEO of Barefoot Networks, which was acquired by Intel. In addition to his entrepreneurial career, he has also held executive positions at Google, Qualcomm, and Intel, and currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Intuitive, IonQ, and Calysta.
Craig Barratt stated: “Optical I/O solves the long-standing challenge of data mobility in computing systems. Artificial intelligence systems will demand huge bandwidth and performance, thus requiring a new generation of foundational technologies and products. Ayar Labs’ leading position in breakthrough optical I/O solutions has enabled system performance to reach levels that other methods cannot achieve. I look forward to using my background to bring new semiconductor technologies to the market and accelerate the company’s development.”
Vladimir Stojanovic is widely recognized for its innovation in photonics and semiconductor technology. In addition to co founding Ayar Labs and serving as Chief Architect, he is also a co-founder of NanoSemi, which has been acquired by MaxLinear. From 2005 to 2013, Stojanovic served as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and as an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was recently appointed as an IEEE academician for his contributions in electronic photon design and on-chip system integration.
The addition of leadership team members to Ayar Labs is built on the company’s outstanding momentum in 2023, including technological breakthroughs and exciting progress with customers and partners. Ayar Labs showcases the industry’s first optical solution of 4Tbps per second, which, driven by Ayar Labs’ SuperNova light source, transfers data from one TeraPHY optical I/O chip to another at a speed of 2Tbps per direction. The company is able to achieve this data transfer with the latency and power efficiency required for data intensive workloads such as generative artificial intelligence and machine learning, while also supporting novel decomposition computing and memory architectures.
The company recently showcased its packaged optical I/O solution that integrates Intel’s industry-leading Agilex FPGA technology. This new optical FPGA promises to increase existing industry bandwidth by 5 times, reduce power consumption by 5 times, and reduce latency by 20 times, all packaged in a universal PCIe card form factor.