--The deep breakthrough of China's lighting industry from the carrier to the core of computing power infrastructure
When artificial intelligence computing power explodes at a three-fold annual growth rate, and when global data centers fall into a bottleneck in the impossible triangle of "transmission distance, energy consumption, and reliability," light, the oldest lighting carrier in the history of human civilization, is completing a disruptive value reconstruction. It is no longer just a tool to illuminate the space, but has become the core infrastructure that supports the operation of computing power and data flow in the AI era.
Recently, the A-share MicroLED sector has set off a daily limit frenzy. Sanan Optoelectronics, Huacan Optoelectronics and other concept-related stocks have continued to strengthen, becoming the most profitable outlet outside the AI computing power track. What triggered this round of market was the MicroLED CPO technology that crossed over from the lighting display industry into the field of AI computing power - it can directly cut the optical transmission power consumption to 5% of the traditional copper cable solution, the overall energy consumption dropped by 95%, and the energy efficiency soared nearly 20 times. From Fudan University and Nanjing University successively breaking through the core technology of Micro LED optical communication, to the Micro LED active optical cable system jointly developed by Microsoft and MediaTek completing the proof of concept, to international giants such as ams OSRAM and Marvell making plans, leading domestic lighting display companies have intensively followed up and disclosed the latest industrialization progress. An industrial revolution triggered by "light" has begun. For China's lighting industry, this is not only a historic opportunity to get rid of the involution of the traditional track and open up the second growth curve, but also a critical window period for the leap from a "lighting manufacturing power" to a "global light technology power".
1. AI computing power explodes, reconstructing the core value of light: from “illuminating the world” to “connecting computing power”
Every iteration in the lighting industry stems from the expansion of the value boundary of light. In the first industrial revolution from incandescent lamps to LED, we have achieved energy-saving and solid-state upgrades in lighting technology. The core value of light has always centered around the two core scenarios of "visual lighting" and "information display". The arrival of the AI era is completely breaking this traditional perception - the third core value of light, namely "high-speed data connection", is rising at an unprecedented speed and becoming the underlying cornerstone supporting the development of the digital economy and AI industry.
Currently, the training and inference of large AI models place extreme demands on the bandwidth, latency, and energy consumption of computing clusters. TrendForce’s latest survey shows that data transmission rate specifications of ≤400 Gbps have been introduced into a large number of data centers of global cloud service providers. From 2025 to the present, market demand is continuing to push transmission specifications to 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps. The contradiction between high-speed transmission and energy consumption control has reached the point where it must be resolved.
In the traditional data center interconnection system, copper cables are limited by transmission distance and electromagnetic interference. Under the ultra-high-speed transmission requirement of 1.6 Tbps, the energy consumption exceeds 10 pJ/bit, which directly leads to an exponential increase in the overall energy consumption of the system. Even the current mainstream optical transceiver module solution has a single module power consumption of up to about 30W. In large data centers, the power consumption of optical modules alone accounts for more than 25%, becoming a core Achilles' heel that restricts the large-scale deployment of AI computing clusters. Although traditional laser optical fiber can achieve long-distance transmission, it faces the pain points of high power consumption, high failure rate, and strong thermal sensitivity. In 2025 alone, the network energy consumption of Microsoft's global data centers will account for 18% of the total IT energy consumption, 40% of which comes from long-distance optical interconnection. The "distance-power consumption-reliability" triangular dilemma that the industry has long been trapped in has opened up a new application space for the LED technology that the lighting industry has been cultivating for many years.
Micro LED, a technology that originally shined in the fields of lighting and display, has become one of the best solutions to break the bottleneck of AI computing power interconnection with its core advantages of high brightness, low power consumption, high modulation bandwidth, and easy array integration. The technological integration of MicroLED CPO has achieved a dimensionality reduction attack on traditional solutions - its essence is the deep integration of micron-level light-emitting diodes and co-packaging optical technology. It is also defined as CPO 2.0 by the industry, completely widening the gap with the CPO 1.0 solution of "traditional laser + CPO".
Although traditional CPO technology solves the pain point of signal integrity deterioration of traditional pluggable optical modules at rates above 1.6Tbps by packaging optical engines and ASIC switching chips together, it is limited by the modulation bandwidth and thermal management bottlenecks of traditional VCSEL lasers and always requires repeated compromises between rate, power consumption and packaging density. The addition of MicroLED directly solves this core problem from the bottom of the light source: Compared with traditional edge-emitting lasers and vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers, MicroLED has a smaller light-emitting area, lower driving voltage, and higher modulation bandwidth, which directly increases the optical signal generation efficiency by an order of magnitude.
From the perspective of underlying principles, the gap between the two is huge: traditional lasers are like "large searchlights", with a volume of millimeter level, high laser threshold current, a driving current of more than 200mA, and high power consumption TIA and D SP chips will have significant wavelength drift and efficiency attenuation above 85°C, and must rely on high-power thermoelectric cooling; MicroLED is an array of hundreds or thousands of "micro-flashlights", and the size of a single chip is less than 50 microns, which can Integrated packaging with CMOS drive circuits to achieve higher-density parallel light emission. Each MicroLED corresponds to an independent data channel, requiring only μA-level extremely low drive current and no additional modulator. The transmitter power consumption can be as low as 80fJ/bit. At the same time, its operating temperature range covers -40°C to 125°C, and it can maintain more than 90% of light output at 85°C. No TEC temperature control is required, which fundamentally solves the heat dissipation problem caused by the high integration of CPO.
Compared with laser optical communication technologies such as VCSEL/DFB/EML, MicroLED optical interconnection has more advantages in terms of modulation bandwidth, temperature tolerance, optical alignment fault tolerance, etc. Its GHz-level modulation bandwidth potential adapts to future ultra-high-speed transmission needs. The stable characteristics of a wide temperature range eliminate the need for precision temperature control. The characteristics of a wide light-emitting angle also make it easier to improve the yield of array production, and the driving power consumption is only 1/3 of lasers, making it an ideal choice for short-distance high-density interconnection.
Different from the "narrow and fast" single-channel high-speed transmission logic of traditional lasers, Micro LED optical interconnection adopts a "wide and slow" parallel transmission architecture, building parallel optical links through hundreds of independently controllable Micro LED channels. On the premise of achieving the same total bandwidth, it greatly reduces system power consumption and improves transmission reliability, perfectly adapting to the short-distance, high-density, and low-power interconnection needs of AI computing clusters. Actual measurement data from the laboratory and industry have intuitively confirmed the disruptive value of this technology: Professor Tian Pengfei of Fudan University and his team overcame the "green light gap" problem and prepared a green Micro LED with a modulation bandwidth of 2.19GHz, achieving a free-space data transmission rate of 9.06Gbps, setting the world's highest level of green Micro LED free-space transmission; Micro developed by a joint team of Nanjing University The LED chip achieves a peak bandwidth of 1.6GHz at a current of 2mA and a power consumption as low as 7.34pJ/bit at a transmission rate of 2.125Gbps, which is two orders of magnitude lower than the energy consumption of the existing solution. The MicroLED CPO solution has achieved a qualitative leap and can achieve an energy consumption of only 1~2 pJ/bit. It perfectly fits the core low energy consumption target of <1.5 pJ/bit proposed by NVIDIA in the silicon photonics CPO specification, with 1.6 Take Tbps optical communication products as an example. After adopting the MicroLED CPO architecture, the overall power consumption can be significantly reduced from 30W of the traditional optical transceiver module to about 1.6W, which is only 5% of the traditional solution, and the energy efficiency ratio is increased by nearly 20 times.
A more concrete implementation value is that for a 100,000-card GPU cluster, if the MicroLED CPO solution is used for all interconnections between racks, 15 million kilowatt-hours of electricity can be saved a year, which is equivalent to reducing about 12,000 tons of carbon emissions. This will fundamentally alleviate the power consumption and heat dissipation pressure of the intelligent computing center and directly cut down the huge operating costs of the data center. This series of technological breakthroughs confirms an industry trend: in the AI era, the competition for light is no longer limited to the involution of lighting brightness and display resolution, but extends to the competition for core technologies at the bottom of the computing power infrastructure. The lighting industry is standing at the core stage of this light technology revolution.
2. The industry turning point has arrived: the existing dilemma and new incremental opportunities in the lighting industry
Looking back at the current development status of China's lighting industry, it is at a critical turning point when the growth of traditional tracks has peaked and emerging tracks are in urgent need of breakthroughs.
On the one hand, the traditional lighting market has entered an era of stock competition. After the golden decade of the popularization of LED technology, China's lighting industry has formed the most complete industrial chain system in the world, and its production capacity has taken a leading position in the world. However, it also faces the dilemma of intensified homogeneous competition, diluted product profits, and insufficient growth momentum. Whether it is general lighting, commercial lighting or home lighting, industry involution has extended from price war to channel war. The incremental market space continues to narrow, and companies urgently need to find new growth breakthroughs.
On the other hand, Micro LED, as a recognized next-generation technology in the lighting and display industry, has always faced bottlenecks in its previous commercialization. In the past, the industry's market imagination for Micro LED has always been limited to consumer electronics scenarios such as AR/VR micro-displays, high-end commercial displays, vehicle lighting, and wearable devices. These scenarios generally have the characteristics of long introduction cycles, high mass production thresholds, fierce market competition, and rapid profit dilution. Most companies are in a dilemma between huge R&D investment and limited market returns.
The rise of the AI optical interconnection channel has completely rewritten the industrial growth logic of Micro LED, opening up a new high-value track worth hundreds of billions for the Chinese lighting industry. Different from the consumer electronics market, the AI optical interconnection market belongs to the category of digital infrastructure construction and has three core characteristics, which perfectly matches the transformation needs of the lighting industry:
First, the market value has jumped. This track no longer measures product value by "shipping scale", but by "system-level value" as the core. The single project value is high and the customer concentration is high. Once the technology is verified, long-term and stable cooperation can be achieved, avoiding the low-price involution of the traditional lighting market;
Second, technology accumulation enables reuse and upgrades. Core technologies such as Micro LED epitaxial growth, chip manufacturing, mass transfer, packaging integration, and drive control that have been cultivated for many years in the lighting industry can all be extended and reused in optical communication scenarios. As long as the technology is optimized for communication-level performance requirements, the cross-border implementation of technology production capacity can be achieved;
Third, industry barriers and moats continue to deepen. Optical interconnection products have stringent requirements for modulation rate, bit error rate, long-term reliability, and array consistency, which naturally raises the threshold for industry entry. Head lighting companies with core technology accumulation can build a deep moat with their technological advantages and escape low-end competition.
International giants have already taken the lead and confirmed the feasibility of this track. European lighting leader ams OSRAM has applied its Micro LED technology proven in mass production in the field of automotive adaptive headlights to cross-border applications in AI data center optical interconnection scenarios. Its EVIYOS chip can integrate 25,600 independently controllable Micro LEDs. LED has achieved a single-channel data transmission rate of 3.0Gbit/s, power consumption is less than 2pJ/bit, and the bit error rate meets the strict industry standards; Microsoft launched the MOSAIC architecture, using a "wide and slow" architecture optical link. The 800G prototype has been successfully tested and is backward compatible with existing interfaces; NVIDIA has not only clarified silicon photonics CPO TSMC's low energy consumption, miniaturization, and high reliability specification goals have also reserved standardized integration interfaces for CPO solutions on the latest AI computing power platforms such as GB200 and Blackwell. At the same time, it invested US$4 billion in optical technology companies Lumentum and Coherent, betting deeply on the optical interconnection track; TSMC opens up 3D Fabric packaging platform cooperates with the American startup Avicena to produce interconnect products based on MicroLED; MediaTek has independently conquered MicroLED light source technology and launched active optical cable solutions.
The dense layout of major international lighting and semiconductor manufacturers clearly points out the direction of industry transformation: the final outcome of the competition among lighting companies is no longer the competition for share in the lighting market, but the competition for the right to speak in the entire light technology scene. From lighting to optical interconnection, China's lighting industry is ushering in a historic industry opportunity comparable to "LED replacing incandescent lamps".
3. The disruptive advantage of China’s lighting industry: industry-university-research collaboration + support from the entire industry chain to seize opportunities in new global markets
Facing the new track of AI optical interconnection, China's lighting industry did not start from scratch. Instead, it has the world's leading first-mover advantages and industrial foundation, and is fully capable of achieving a leap from following to leading. At present, the domestic industrial chain has not fallen behind in this round of technological change. With the world's most complete MicroLED industry chain layout, domestic companies have achieved breakthroughs in key technologies and disclosed the latest progress in 2025, forming a gradient layout of leading implementation, R&D and pre-research, and cross-border collaboration. They are in the key transition stage from "sample verification" to "small batch mass production". 2026 is generally regarded by the industry as the first year of accelerated implementation of domestic substitution.
First of all, technological breakthroughs in scientific research have laid a solid theoretical foundation for industrial implementation. Top domestic universities such as Fudan University and Nanjing University have achieved world-leading scientific research results in the field of Micro LED optical communications: The Fudan University team has overcome the green light Micro problem that has troubled the industry for many years. The LED "green gap" problem alleviates the quantum confinement Stark effect through stress relief strategies, achieving dual breakthroughs in modulation bandwidth and transmission rate, providing core technical support for full-color visible light communications and high-density optical interconnection. From the perspective of energy efficiency optimization, the Nanjing University team achieved ultra-low power consumption and ultra-high bandwidth of Micro LED chips through 1nm ultra-thin quantum well design and sidewall passivation current limiting technology, providing a Chinese solution for "energy-saving interconnection" of data centers. The research results of the two major universities have formed a complementary technical system from the two dimensions of performance expansion and energy efficiency optimization, providing a basis for the technological transformation of the domestic lighting industry.
