Intel Advances Progress in Integrated Photonics for Data Centers
December 03 2020 - 3:00PM
Business Wire
What’s New: Today, at Intel Labs Day, Intel highlighted
industry-leading technological advances toward the realization of
the company’s long-standing vision of integrating photonics with
low-cost, high-volume silicon. The advancements represent critical
progress in the field of optical interconnects, which address
growing challenges around the performance scaling of electrical
input/output (I/O) as compute-hungry data workloads increasingly
overwhelm network traffic in data centers. Intel demonstrated
advances in key technology building blocks, including
miniaturization, paving the way for tighter integration of optical
and silicon technologies.
“We are approaching an I/O power wall and an
I/O bandwidth gap that will dramatically hinder performance
scaling. The rapid progress Intel is making in integrated photonics
will enable the industry to fully re-imagine data center networks
and architectures that are connected by light. We have now
demonstrated all of the critical optical technology building blocks
on one silicon platform, tightly integrated with CMOS silicon. Our
research on tightly integrating photonics with CMOS silicon can
systematically eliminate barriers across cost, power and size
constraints to bring the transformative power of optical
interconnects to server packages.” –James Jaussi, senior principal
engineer and director of PHY Lab, Intel Labs
Why it matters: New data-centric workloads are growing
every day within the data center, with ever-increasing data
movement from server to server that is taxing the capabilities of
today’s network infrastructure. The industry is quickly approaching
practical limits of electrical I/O performance. As bandwidth demand
for compute keeps increasing, electrical I/O isn’t scaling to keep
pace, resulting in an “I/O power wall” that limits available power
for compute operations. By bringing optical I/O directly into our
servers and onto our packages, we can break down this barrier,
enabling data to move more efficiently.
About the New Technology Building Blocks: At the Intel
Labs virtual event today, Intel demonstrated key progress in
critical technology building blocks that are fundamental to the
company’s integrated photonics research. These technology building
blocks — including light generation, amplification, detection,
modulation, complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)
interface circuits and package integration — are essential to
achieve integrated photonics. A prototype shown at the event
featured tight coupling of photonics and CMOS technologies, serving
as a proof-of-concept of future full integration of optical
photonics with core compute silicon. Intel also showcased
micro-ring modulators that are 1000x smaller than traditional
components. The large size and cost of conventional silicon
modulators have been a barrier to bringing optical technology onto
server packages, which require the integration of hundreds of these
devices. These combined results pave the way for the extended use
of silicon photonics beyond the upper layers of the network to
inside the server and onto future server packages.
Key technology building blocks showcased:
- Micro-ring modulators: Conventional silicon modulators
take up too much area and are costly to place on IC packages. By
developing micro-ring modulators, Intel has miniaturized the
modulator by a factor of more than 1,000, thereby eliminating a key
barrier to integrating silicon photonics onto a compute
package.
- All-silicon photodetector: For decades, the industry has
believed silicon has virtually no light detection capability in the
1.3-1.6um wavelength range. Intel showcased research that proves
otherwise. Lower cost is one of the main benefits of this
breakthrough.
- Integrated semiconductor optical amplifier: As the focus
turns to reducing total power consumption, integrated semiconductor
optical amplifiers are an indispensable technology, made possible
with the same material used for the integrated laser.
- Integrated multi-wavelength lasers: Using a technique
called wavelength division multiplexing, separate wavelengths can
be used from the same laser to convey more data in the same beam of
light. This enables additional data to be transmitted over a single
fiber, increasing bandwidth density.
- Integration: By tightly integrating silicon photonics
and CMOS silicon through advanced packaging techniques, we can gain
three benefits: lower power, higher bandwidth and reduced pin
count. Intel is the only company that has demonstrated integrated
multi-wavelength lasers and semiconductor optical amplifiers,
all-silicon photodetectors, and micro-ring modulators on a single
technology platform tightly integrated with CMOS silicon. This
research breakthrough paves the path for scaling integrated
photonics.
What’s Next: Integrated photonics research demonstrated
at the event showcased meaningful progress toward Intel’s ambitious
goal initiated many years ago to tap light as the basis of
connectivity technology. The new research opens possibilities,
including future architectures that are more disaggregated, with
multiple functional blocks such as compute, memory, accelerators
and peripherals spread throughout the entire network and
interconnected via optical and software in high-speed and
low-latency links.
More Context: Intel Labs Day 2020 (Press Kit) | Intel
Labs (Press Kit)
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating
world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches
lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the
design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our
customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the
cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash
the potential of data to transform business and society for the
better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to
newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo and other Intel marks
are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other
names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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Supriya Venkat 1-503-320-8024 supriya.venkat@intel.com
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