IBM and Agilent start optical interconnect program
The total communications bandwidth inside servers has been increasing by roughly 10 times every four years, driven by increasing chip speeds and the number of processors per system. By 2010, a bandwidth of about 40 Tbit/s between microprocessors will be required. Agilent and IBM plan to develop optical-interconnect technology that delivers this bandwidth in time to meet this need while simultaneously addressing power, cost, density, and reliability issues.
"This program could greatly accelerate the introduction of optical interconnects into the heart of computer and communications systems, well beyond today s cabled rack-to-rack technology, by focusing on high levels of integration and increased per-channel speed to reduce power and cost," said Marc Taubenblatt, senior manager of optical communications at IBM Research. "Furthermore, by drawing on the substantial manufacturing and systems experience of Agilent and IBM, we plan to develop solutions that can be readily integrated into future products."
"The real goal of this program is to reach terabit-per-second speeds in a form factor small enough to enable chip-to-chip interconnects," said Waguih Ishak, director of the Communications and Optics Research Laboratory at Agilent. "This will only be achieved by developing miniature optical components, pushing their operating speeds to 40 Gbit/s) and higher, and by clever integration and packaging techniques.”
Key goals of IBM and Agilent s program include, aggregate data rates up to 1 Tbit/s per module; small form factor modules less than 2 cm 2; ultra low power (5-10 mW/Gbit/s); and high levels of integration to allow tight coupling with computer chips for optical transceivers and waveguide interconnects.
The program will leverage IBM s expertise in optical modules and links, heterogeneous system on package, card design and computer systems, and Agilent s experience in optoelectronic devices and transceiver modules. The team is expected to demonstrate the enormous communication bandwidths needed for future servers such as those under the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) initiative.
IBM s HPCS project will investigate the use of hundreds or thousands of terabit-class optical interconnects to overcome the bandwidth limitation of today s server interconnects. In military systems, the on-board signal processing requirements associated with sensing and communication has been growing rapidly. These applications require massive data movement between multiple processors and between processors and memory. The use of optical interconnects at the module level is expected to improve the performance while reducing hardware by making more efficient use of electronic processing hardware.
