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IBM Develops Optical Interconnects with Terabit Speeds
 IBM Develops Optical Interconnects with Terabit Speeds 3/24/2008 Researchers at IBM have unveiled an integrated optical module that they claim could transfer information between chips at rates of up to 8 Tbit/s. That kind of bandwidth would be suitable for supercomputing clusters and data centers, and would also allow large datasets to be shared more easily – whether for computer-intensive scientific investigations or for consumers sharing high-definition movies. The optical "wiring" consists of an array of low-loss polymer optical waveguides fabricated on a standard printed circuit board (PCB) to form what IBM calls an "Optocard". The polymer waveguides are individual 35 x 35 µm 'optical wires' that interconnect each transmitter and receiver pair. The Optocard incorporates 48 of these optical wires at a density of 16 channels/mm." Standard photolithographic processing is used to pattern the individual polymer waveguides on the surface of the PCB, and the light is coupled into/out of the waveguides using microlenses and turning mirrors. The new high-speed optical transceiver uses a parallel arrangement of 24 transmitters and 24 receivers, each operating at 12.5 Gbit/s. This yields a total bidirectional data transfer rate of 300 Gbit/s, almost double that of the company's earlier device. Compared to current commercial optical modules, the transceiver provides 10 times more bandwidth, but in a package that is 10 times smaller. These and other components are integrated together using a hybrid packaging approach, in which flip-chip packaging is used to assemble chips fabricated in different materials and/or different processes on the same substrate. The end result is a highly integrated 3D module that incorporates 32 optical data links, each one with a capacity of 10 Gbit/s. Combining multiple modules together makes it possible to achieve transfer rates of 8 Tbit/s for a total aggregate power consumption of just 100 W. For a typical 100 m data link, IBM's optics-based approach consumes 100 times less power than today's electrical interconnects, and one-tenth of the power of current commercial optical modules. The transceiver technology could be commercialized in one to two years. The Optocard technology that adds polymer optical waveguides to standard PCBs may take up to five years before commercial versions become available. << Back to News |
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