Ayar Labs, a pioneer in the use of silicon photonics for chip-to-chip optical connectivity, recently announced that it would demonstrate the industry's first four terabit-per-second (Tbps) bi-directional Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) solution at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) taking place in San Diego from March 5-9, 2023.
In collaboration with GlobalFoundries, Lumentum, Macom, Sivers Photonics, and other leading high-volume manufacturing and supply partners, the company has reached this latest milestone in delivering the optical interconnects required for data-intensive applications. Separately, the company and its partner Quantifi Photonics made an announcement at OFC regarding a CW-WDM-compliant testing platform for its SuperNovaTM light source.
In-package optical I/O uniquely modifies the system design's power and performance trajectories by allowing compute, memory, and network silicon to connect with a fraction of the power and significantly improved performance, latency, and reach compared to existing electrical I/O solutions. Presented in a compact, co-packaged CMOS chiplet, optical I/O becomes the foundation of next-generation artificial intelligence, dense 6G telecommunications systems, disaggregated data centers, phased array sensory systems, and more.
At OFC, Ayar Labs will present the first public demonstration of its optical I/O solution, moving data at 2.048 TBPS in each direction from one TeraPHYTM optical I/O chiplet to another, fueled by their SuperNovaTM light source. SuperNovaTM enables eight fiber optic links (employing 64 highly accurate wavelengths running at 32 GBPS, with 256 GBPS per individual fiber for eight wavelengths) to operate error-free with a latency of less than 10ns and without the need for Forward Error Correction (FEC).
This permits a total bandwidth of 2.048 TBPS in each direction or 4.096 TBPS in both directions. Notably, the data transfer consumes less than five pJ/bit (10W) of energy, an incredible degree of energy efficiency, offering the power density and performance per watt required for AI models with trillions of variables, advanced HPC designs, and other applications.
About Ayar Labs
Ayar Labs is a tech company disrupting traditional computing power and performance curves with light-based technology. The company was established in 2015 and is based in Santa Clara, California. Using their patented silicon photonics approach, the company replaces electrical-based I/O with high-speed, efficient optical interconnects and multi-wavelength lasers. The company's disruptive technology enables groundbreaking design breakthroughs for trillions of AI connections, 6G, disaggregated data centers, phased array sensory systems, and more. It is backed by leading venture capital and strategic investors such as GlobalFoundries, Intel Capital, and NVIDIA.