FEATURE : PHOTONIC INTEGRATION
SEEKING A PATH BEYOND PLUGGABLE MODULES
ENABLING ON-BOARD AND CO-PACKAGED OPTICS REQUIRES PHOTONIC INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SILICON PHOTONICS, BUT THE EXACT FORMAT IS YET TO BE ESTABLISHED
ANDY EXTANCE A
s the pandemic underlines the value of the internet more than ever, its underlying technology is making one of its biggest transitions for years.
Companies are actively developing solutions
that will enable the current 12.8TbE switching capacity of network switches to double every 18 months. Tis is because the powerful switch application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) doing their processing are speeding up rapidly. Likewise, transceiver data rates are set to
increase from 100 to 800Gb/s by 2022 and the number of transceivers per switch will grow from 32 to 64 or 128. Te resulting density of components will be difficult to integrate, and will generate a lot of heat that is hard to dissipate. Such advances will therefore require
components that focus on energy efficiency, explained Erman Timurdogan, director of optical communications and process design kit development at Analog Photonics. Tat will reduce thermal losses enough for coolers to keep up, he said.
Multiple choice To increase efficiency, advanced complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) nodes and multiple chiplets with different optimised functionalities, are being combined in multi-chip modules (MCM). ‘However, transferring the data out is geting harder,’ Timurdogan said. ‘Tere are only two electrical solutions: increase socket size to allow more connections, or increase the communication data rate in each connection. A large socket increases cost and decreases manufacturability, and copper connections are lossy at high data rates.’ Tere is a solution that does not suffer
from these drawbacks: place optical fibre connections close to switch ASICs. Tat idea has driven two slightly different concepts with slightly different application focuses: On-Board Optics (OBO) and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO). Both move away from the pluggable module standards to which the optical communication industry has become accustomed. Te challenge for the companies delivering
the resulting products is finding the right technical strategy to realise these concepts. And while development is ongoing, the industry is
PRODUCTION DEPLOYMENT OF CPO NEEDS SUBSTANTIAL INVESTMENT IN TECHNOLOGY AND FIELD TRIALS
Ranovus’ Odin IC has demonstrated operation with eight optical channels of 100Gbps per fibre pair, potentially enabling 25.6TbE switches
8 FiBRE SYSTEMS n Issue 30 n Winter 2021
www.fibre-systems.com @fibresystemsmag
Ranovus
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