ANALYSIS: SILICON PHOTONICS


“We worked with GlobalFoundries on developing a monolithic process, one that lets you put electronics and optics on the same chip. A lot of traditional optics are separate”


to run at those temperatures, Saleh explained, lasers are susceptible to problems from temperature changes. ‘High temperature causes early degradation and when the temperature moves up and down, your light actually shifts in frequency.’ Ayar Labs developed its


technology alongside Global Foundries as part of its monolithic silicon photonics platform. In addition to Global Foundries being a strategic investor in Ayar Labs, the company was also one of their earliest partners in developing this process. ‘We worked with Global


source consists of a single frequency, distributed feedback (DFB) laser array coupled to a laser distribution network. Together, the laser and distribution network generates eight wavelengths across eight fibres, for a total of 64 addressable wavelength carriers. This technology could


massively increase the memory bandwidth for future HPC and AI systems, as each chiplet delivers the equivalent of 64 PCIe Gen 5 lanes, which provides up to two terabits per second of I/O performance. The system uses standard silicon fabrication techniques along with disaggregated multi- wavelength lasers to achieve high-speed, high-density chip-to-chip communication with power consumption at a picojoule range. ‘There are two reasons why


you’d want to disaggregate the laser first,’ Saleh noted. ‘The SoC tends to be a very hostile environment; [it’s] very common for these high-power CPUs to get to 125-plus °C’ While the silicon is qualified


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Foundries on developing a monolithic process, one that lets you put electronics and optics on the same chip,’ Saleh said. ‘A lot of traditional optics are separate; we have it all combined into one and that simplifies our customer’s life when they’re packaging all these components – it reduces power, it reduces costs and reduces latency.’ GF Fotonix is Global


Foundries’ next-generation, monolithic platform, which is the first in the industry to combine its 300mm photonics features and 300GHz-class RF- CMOS on a silicon wafer. The process has been designed to deliver performance at scale and will be used to develop photonic compute and sensing applications. Ayar Labs also helped Global Foundries develop an advanced electro- optic PDK that will be released in Q2 2022 and will be integrated into electronic design automation (EDA) vendor design tools.


Focus on HPC


The silicon photonics designed by Ayar Labs could be used to create architectural designs that can support different


For


configurations of hardware. ‘When we talk about the different markets we serve, we like to think of this whole cloud space and the focus there mostly is on disaggregated architectures, or pooled and composable resources,’ Saleh said. ‘The reality is that it also applies to HPC. ‘For AI and HPC, the focus


is directed more towards glueless fabrics and memory semantic fabrics. AI especially is on the glueless side,’ Saleh continued. ‘So think about systems that may want to interconnect 64, 128 or 256 CPUs, seamlessly. We’re not talking about traditional, large, Xeon class CPUs, these could be smaller accelerators, or AI engines, where you want to be able to create a mesh. ‘In the AI space, I like to simplify it as: we’re trying to


replicate the human brain. You’ve got a bunch of nodes, maybe each node doesn’t compute a lot, but it does a very specialised function. Then you have a lot of connections, the synapses between all those different nodes. And you need those nodes to be firing at high bandwidth, very low latency and low power to be able to create and solve these large AI problems,’ Saleh added. Ayar Labs recently announced that it had secured $130m in additional funding from Boardman Bay Capital Management, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Nvidia, as well as multiple new and existing financial investors. They join existing strategic investors Applied Ventures, Global Foundries, Intel Capital and Lockheed Martin Ventures. EO


Silicon Photomultipliers


AP Technologies is the new UK distributor for the Broadcom range of high performance Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs).


SiPMs are replacing conventional vacuum photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in high-speed low-light applications such as Radiation Imaging and Detection; X-ray imaging; Fluorescence; Cytometry and others.


Broadcom’s range of 1mm to 6mm active area SiPMs are available as rugged surface mount components and high fill factor arrays.


A compact PnP module combining TIA, controllable bias & tuneable offset is ideal for fluorescence applications such as flow cytometers.


®


Choice of Active Area 1mm, 3mm, 4mm & 6mm


High Photon Detection Efficiency Low Dark Count Rate Excellent VBr


uniformity


Low Operating Voltage SiPM Arrays


Evaluation Kits Integrated SiPM Modules Solutions T: 01225 780400 E: info@aptechnologies.co.uk May 2022 Electro Optics 15


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