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Though there’s nonetheless numerous innovation in conventional copper-based interconnects, together with the lately introduced UCIe chiplet commonplace, in the previous couple of years the business has additionally more and more began to as an alternative use mild (or optics), particularly within the datacenter. Some even argue that copper is near reaching a reminiscence wall.
In that regard, silicon photonics has confirmed to be superior relating to value, energy consumption and bandwidth as an inter-package to long-range interconnect. At Optical Fiber Conference2022, a number of bulletins have been made as the following step in the direction of making silicon photonics really ubiquitous.
Ranovus demonstrates 800G interconnect for co-packaged optics
Ranovus has introduced and demonstrated a co-packaged optics platform, known as Analog-Drive CPO 2.0, based mostly on its Odin 800 Gbps structure. The product is a collaboration with TE Connectivity, which was liable for the effective pitch socket interposer expertise.
Because the introduction of silicon photonics within the information heart about half a decade in the past, optics-based interconnects are slowly turning into extra ubiquitous within the information heart, as integration and quantity manufacturing have lowered its value in comparison with discrete optics and copper. The subsequent evolution is to combine the transceivers even nearer to the switches, which may additional scale back energy. That is known as co-packaged optics (CPO). Silicon photonics engines may be built-in with different silicon corresponding to AI accelerators to scale back the facility and price of information transmission.
The CPO resolution that Ranovus demonstrated relies on its Odin silicon photonics engine, which delivers 100 Gbps per wavelength and consists of electro-photonic built-in circuit cores, a laser platform and superior packaging. The engine scales from 800Gbps to three.2Tbps, though the demonstration was at 800Gbps. The co-packaged side is achieved by way of TE’s interposer expertise, which permits for integration of the photonics engines with an ASIC. Ranovus mentioned the expertise is being trialed all through the business.
It needs to be famous, although, that Ranovus isn’t the one firm engaged on co-packaged optics. For instance, in 2020, Intel introduced an analogous demonstration of co-packaged optics together with its Barefoot Community Tofino ethernet swap. Intel goals to commercialize the expertise by the tip of 2023 beginning at 50Tbps switches, which is twice as a lot bandwidth as the present cutting-edge.
Ranovus demonstrates co-packaged optics mixed with Xilinx Versal
In an analogous spirit because the earlier demonstration, Ranovus additionally demonstrated its 800G CPO 2.0 platform along with a Xilinx Versal FPGA, aimed toward AI/ML workloads. Ranovus mentioned this lowered energy in addition to value by simplifying board routing. Ranovus instructed EETimes it anticipated the price to be about one-tenth of an everyday $800 400G module and that the facility consumption was lowered by no less than 10W, consuming simply 4W.
“We have now been on the forefront 2 of the CPO motion since 2018 and are delighted to share our multidisciplinary IP cores with our clients who wish to speed up the adoption of Analog Drive CPO in information facilities,” mentioned Hamid Arabzadeh, chairman and CEO of Ranovus.
“We’re pleased with our collaboration with Ranovus that helped obtain file efficiency ranges whereas on the identical time decreasing energy and general footprint of the whole resolution,” mentioned Dan Mansur, vp of the adaptable and embedded computing group at AMD (previously Xilinx). “This CPO demonstration highlights the flexibility of the Versal GTM SERDES to function over something from long-reach copper to immediately driving the Ranovus Analog-Drive CPO 2.0 optical engine. Co-packaging Ranovus Odin™ with Xilinx Versal is a major development, which permits information heart clients to construct extremely environment friendly and cost-effective programs for next-generation workloads.”
Ranovus delivers 100G optical I/O cores based mostly on GlobalFoundries’ Fotonix platform
Lastly, Ranovus introduced the provision of its protocol-agnostic Odin 100G optical I/O core, which was used within the two demonstrations described above. It’s based mostly on GlobalFoundries’ Fotonix silicon photonics platform that mixes photonics and RF-CMOS on a 300mm silicon wafer.
Because the title implies, the Odin 100G core delivers 100Gbps bandwidth per wavelength. Ranovus additional says that it’s scalable from 8 to 32 cores in a bundle, which implies it will probably ship as much as 3.2Tbps in complete. The core is out there as optical I/O chiplets or IP core, and as such could be built-in with processors, switches and reminiscence home equipment. This enables the expertise to deal with a wide range of segments together with AI/ML, metaverse, cloud, 5G communications, protection and aerospace.
GF Fotonix
GlobalFoundries itself introduced its Fotonix platform at Optical Fiber Convention 2022 together with a number of buyer wins corresponding to Broadcom, Cisco and Nvidia. Collectively, its clients embody practically all main contenders in (silicon) photonics, aside from Intel. GlobalFoundries said the platform scales as much as 500Gbps per fiber. The primary PDK shall be accessible in April.
“Silicon photonics is now acknowledged as a needed expertise for the datacenter revolution, and our main semiconductor manufacturing expertise platform accelerates adoption into the mainstream,” mentioned Amir Faintuch, senior vp and common supervisor of compute and wired infrastructure at GlobalFoundries.
