Ayar Labs will be demonstrating its optical I/O (input/output) technology pubicly for the first time at next week's Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) in San Diego.
The new solution is offered in a compact, co-packaged CMOS chiplet and provides 4Tbps bi-directional wavelength division multiplexing for networking and connectivity in data-intensive applications.
According to Ayar, the technology could become the foundation of data centres supporting applications including: AI/HPC data centres, disaggregated data centres, dense 6G telecommunications systems, and phased array sensory systems.
At OFC, Ayar Labs will show its optical I/O solution moving data from one TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet to another at 2.048Tbps in each direction - powered by the firm's SuperNova light source.
SuperNova powers eight fibre links (using 64 highly accurate wavelengths operating at 32Gbps, for eight wavelengths and 256Gbps per individual fibre) running error free at lower than 10ns of latency and without needing Forward Error Correction (FEC). This allows for a bandwidth of 2.048 Tbps in each direction or 4.096 Tbps bi-directional.
The data transfer uses less than 5pJ/bit (10W) – energy efficiency capable of providing the power density and performance per watt needed to achieve AI models with trillions of parameters, or to support the development of advanced HPC systems.
Ayar Labs has achieved this latest milestone in partnership with its high-volume manufacturing and supply partners: GlobalFoundries, Lumentum, Macom and Sivers Photonics.
Charlie Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs, said: “Ayar Labs continues to showcase our technology leadership with this upcoming live silicon demonstration, an industry-first milestone on the path to overcoming the impending power and performance wall of electrical design, and unleashing the power of next-generation compute. As we bring together all the supply, manufacturing, test and compute pieces needed for high-volume deployment, we also show today that we continue to lead in pure technical achievement.”
Craig Thompson, VP of Business Development for Networking at Nvidia, which invested in Ayar Labs last year, added: “In-package optical I/O solutions have the potential to transform how semiconductor, AI, HPC and aerospace customers process their next-generation, data-intensive workloads."
