IBM scientists developed a
prototype of optical chipset, dubbed “Holey Optochip”, that is the first
parallel optical transceiver to transfer one trillion bits – one terabit – of information per second, the equivalent of downloading 500 high definition movies. The report will be presented at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference taking place in Los Angeles.
With
the ability to move information at blazing speeds – eight times faster
than parallel optical components available today – the breakthrough
could transform how data is accessed, shared and used for a new era of
communications, computing and entertainment. The raw speed of one
transceiver is equivalent to the bandwidth consumed by 100,000 users at
today’s typical 10 Mb/s high-speed internet access. Or, it would take
just around an hour to transfer the entire U.S. Library of Congress web archive through the transceiver.
Progress in optical communications is being driven by an explosion of new applications
and services as the amount of data being created and transmitted over
corporate and consumer networks continues to grow. At one terabit per
second, IBM’s latest advance in optical chip technology provides
unprecedented amounts of bandwidth that could one day ship loads of data
such as posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted
online, sensors used to gather climate information, and transaction
records of online purchases.
“Reaching the one trillion
bit per second mark with the Holey Optochip marks IBM’s latest
milestone to develop chip-scale transceivers that can handle the volume
of traffic in the era of big data,” said IBM Researcher Clint Schow,
part of the team that built the prototype. “We have been actively
pursuing higher levels of integration, power efficiency and performance
for all the optical components through packaging and circuit
innovations. We aim to improve on the technology for commercialization
in the next decade with the collaboration of manufacturing partners.”
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| Photomicrograph of IBM Holey Optochip. Original chip dimensions are 5.2 mm x 5 .8 mm. |
Optical networking offers the potential to significantly improve data transfer
rates by speeding the flow of data using light pulses, instead of
sending electrons over wires. Because of this, researchers have been
looking for ways to make use of optical signals within standard
low-cost, high-volume chip manufacturing techniques for widespread use.
Using a novel approach, scientists in IBM labs developed the Holey
Optochip by fabricating 48 holes through a standard silicon CMOS chip.
The holes allow optical access through the back of the chip to 24
receiver and 24 transmitter channels to produce an ultra-compact,
high-performing and power-efficient optical module capable of record
setting data transfer rates. The compactness and capacity of optical
communication has become indispensable in the design of large
data-handling systems.
With that in mind, the Holey Optochip
module is constructed with components that are commercially available
today, providing the possibility to manufacture at economies of scale.
Consistent with green computing initiatives, the Holey Optochip achieves
record speed at a power efficiency (the amount of power required to
transmit a bit of information) that is among the best ever reported. The
transceiver consumes less than five watts; the power consumed by a 100W
light bulb could power 20 transceivers. This progress in power
efficient interconnects is necessary to allow companies who adopt
high-performance computing to manage their energy load while performing
powerful applications such as analytics, data modeling and forecasting.
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| Photomicrograph of the back of the IBM Holey Optochip with lasers and photodectors visible through substrate holes. |
By demonstrating unparalleled levels
of performance, the Holey Optochip illustrates that high-speed,
low-power interconnects are feasible in the near term and optical is the
only transmission medium that can stay ahead of the accelerating global
demand for broadband. The future of computing will rely heavily on
optical chip technology to facilitate the growth of big data and cloud
computing and the drive for next-generation data center applications.
Parallel optics is a fiber optic technology primarily targeted for
high-data, short-reach multimode fiber systems that are typically less
than 150 meters. Parallel optics differs from traditional duplex fiber
optic serial communication in that data is simultaneously transmitted
and received over multiple optical fibers.
A single 90-nanometer IBM CMOS
transceiver IC with 24 receiver and 24 transmitter circuits becomes a
Holey Optochip with the fabrication of forty-eight through-silicon
holes, or “optical vias” – one for each transmitter and receiver
channel. Simple post-processing on completed CMOS wafers with all
devices and standard wiring levels results in an entire wafer populated
with Holey Optochips. The transceiver chip measures only 5.2 mm x 5.8
mm. Twenty-four channel, industry-standard 850-nm VCSEL (vertical cavity
surface emitting laser) and photodiode arrays are directly flip-chip
soldered to the Optochip. This direct packaging produces
high-performance, chip-scale optical engines.
The Holey Optochips are designed for direct coupling to a standard
48-channel multimode fiber array through an efficient microlens optical
system that can be assembled with conventional high-volume packaging
tools.
Source : IBM
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