Over a year and half ago Microsoft and Facebook formed a collaboration to help solve this Co Packaging problem specifically when they enter higher speeds. (https://www.onboardoptics.org/)

 

This is what they said back then “ However, technologists and users agree that co-packaging silicon and photonic elements will provide the most efficient way to handle the needs of high-speed silicon I/O. Microsoft and Facebook say the advent of the 51-Tbps switch generation will mark the point at which such co-packing will be required.

 

 

Thanks to ROGUE’s fantastic work we can see below what Tom said. He highlighted that the next generation of Broadcom’s Switch will double from 25.6 TB/sec to 51.2 TB/sec and the technology will need to adapt. The Optical Interposer can address these issues. 

 

The 400G Light Bar, that has a trademark associated with it, is also a product that we think is applicable to the co-packaged optics market. And briefly I’ll just say that what’s happening in that market is that Broadcom’s latest switch that operates at 25.6 Tb/sec. Once it goes to the next generation that pretty much doubles that speed… Much of the energy that is available to power the switch blade and the server racks is going to be used up. Something has to happen. And what has to happen is all of the compensating circuits that are currently in a switch blade that compensate for the loss of power and the timing of the signal within that box when the electrons go from the switch to the back side of the blade… to the backplane… All of those circuits that also take energy have to come out. And we think we are in a very good position to offer products in that area because of the technology that we’ve got in the optical interposer. We think we can come much closer to the switch itself and provide some flexibility and lower power requirement solutions in the market.