With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), the demand for faster data center interconnects is growing day by day. Traditional technologies are struggling to keep up with the times, and optical interconnects have become a feasible solution to solve the problem of electronic input/output (I/O) performance expansion. Using silicon materials to manufacture optoelectronic devices can not only combine the advantages of silicon materials in mature manufacturing processes, low cost, and high integration, but also leverage the advantages of photonics in high-speed transmission and high bandwidth.
According to relevant media reports, TSMC has organized a dedicated R&D team of approximately 200 experts to focus on how to apply silicon photonics to future chips. It is rumored that TSMC plans to cooperate with manufacturers such as Nvidia and Broadcom to jointly promote the development of silicon photonics technology. The components involved cover 45nm to 7nm process technologies. It is expected that related products will receive orders as early as the second half of 2024 and will enter the mass production stage in 2025.
As data transmission rates increase, power consumption and thermal management become more critical, and solutions proposed by the industry include using co-packaging of optoelectronics (CPO) technology to package silicon photonic components with application-specific integrated chips. The relevant person in charge of TSMC said that if it can provide a good silicon photonics integrated system, it can solve the two key issues of energy efficiency and AI computing power. Now it may be at the beginning of a new era.
Many technology giants are promoting the integration of optical and silicon technologies, such as Intel. Intel Labs also established the Interconnect Integrated Photonics Research Center in December 2021 to promote research and development in data center integrated photonics and pave the way for computing interconnect in the next decade. Earlier, Intel also demonstrated a silicon platform integrating key optical technology building blocks, including light generation, amplification, detection, modulation, CMOS interface circuits and packaging integration.
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