LightCounting reports on highlights from Photonics West and DesignCon 2024.

https://lightcounting.com/research-note/february-2024-to-224g-and-beyond-349

Abstract

February 2024 To 224G and Beyond

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Increasing data rates per lane (often referred to as lane speed) is only one of three possible directions to boost the bandwidth of optical interconnects, as illustrated in the figure below. Higher lane speed is a preferred solution for most of the Ethernet and InfiniBand interconnects. Direct I/Os to accelerators, such as NVLink to Nvidia’s GPUs or ICI to Google’s TPUs, also need the highest lane speed possible. Nvidia is using parallel types of transceivers (SR8 and DR8) now, but it plans to use multi-wavelength solutions as well in the future. Google is already using 8-wavelength FR8 transceivers.

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Celestial AI disclosed some of their plans which were tightly guarded until recently behind an enigmatic company name. The plans are ambitious and resemble the Trojan horse strategy pioneered millennia ago with a 21st century twist. Celestial AI’s IP allows the optics to be hidden in a substate or an interposer with 2.5D packaging under a GPU chip. The GPU would not know what is coming until night falls and it is too late. The only way for the GPU to send the data out will be via optics and the victory will be declared soon after that.



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