Turning to optical I/O to open up computing pinch points

Getting data in and out of chips used for modern computing has become a key challenge for designers.

Hugo Saleh

A chip may talk to a neighbouring device in the same platform or to a chip across the data centre.

The sheer quantity of data and the reaches involved - tens or hundreds of meters - is why the industry is turning to optical for a chip’s input-output (I/O).

It is this technology transition that excites Ayar Labs.

The US start-up showcased its latest TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet operating at 1 terabit-per-second (Tbps) during the OFC virtual conference and exhibition held in June.

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Ayar Labs’ TeraPhy chiplet nears volume production

Moving data between processing nodes - whether servers in a data centre or specialised computing nodes used for supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI) - is becoming a performance bottleneck.

Workloads continue to grow yet networking isn’t keeping pace with processing hardware, resulting in the inefficient use of costly hardware.

Networking also accounts for an increasing proportion of the overall power consumed by such computing systems.

These trends explain the increasing interest in placing optics alongside chips and co-packaging the two to boost input-output (I/O) capacity and reach.

At the ECOC 2020 exhibition and conference held virtually, start-up Ayar Labs showcased its first working TeraPHY, an optical I/O chiplet, manufactured using GlobalFoundries’ 45nm silicon-photonics process.

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Ayar Labs advances I/O and pens GlobalFoundries deal

Silicon photonics start-up, Ayar Labs, has entered into a strategic agreement with semiconductor foundry, GlobalFoundries.

Alexandra Wright-GladsteinAyar Labs will provide GlobalFoundries with its optical input-output (I/O) technology. In return, the start-up will gain early access to the foundry’s 45nm CMOS process being tailored for silicon photonics.

GlobalFoundries has also made an investment in the start-up for an undisclosed fee.

“We gain, first and foremost, a close relationship with GlobalFoundries as we qualify our product for customers,” says Alexandra Wright-Gladstein, co-founder and CEO of Ayar Labs. “That will help us speed up availability of our product and have their weight of support behind us.”

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The making of integrated optics

A US initiative is bringing together leading companies with top academics and universities to create a manufacturing infrastructure for the widespread adoption of integrated photonics.

The US sees integrated photonics as a strategic technology and has set up the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics - AIM Photonics - to advance the technology and make it available to a wider community of companies. AIM Photonics, with $610 million of public and private funding, is a five-year initiative ending in 2020. AIM’s long-term goal is to be self-sustaining.

Doug Coolbaugh

“Right now the infrastructure is focussed on electronics and CMOS but photonics is going to be the future,” says Doug Coolbaugh, chief operations officer at AIM Photonics. “There is no other way to do it [very high bandwidth] except using light for ultra fast communications.”

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