Intel Demonstrates First Fully Integrated Optical I/O Chiplet
Intel has announced a breakthrough in integrated photonics technology by demonstrating the first-ever fully integrated optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet at OFC 2024. The OCI chiplet, co-packaged with an Intel CPU, significantly enhances high-bandwidth data transmission, important for AI infrastructure and high-performance computing (HPC). It supports 64 channels of 32 Gbps data transmission on up to 100 meters of fiber optics, addressing AI's growing demands for higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, and longer reach. Leveraging Intel's silicon photonics technology, the chiplet integrates with CPUs, GPUs, IPUs, and other SoCs, offering superior energy efficiency at 5 pico-Joules per bit. This innovation is expected to revolutionize AI infrastructure by enabling future scalability of CPU/GPU cluster connectivity, coherent memory expansion, and resource disaggregation.
- Intel's OCI chiplet supports 64 channels of 32 Gbps data transmission, enhancing high-bandwidth interconnect.
- The chiplet significantly reduces power consumption to 5 pico-Joules per bit compared to 15 pJ/bit for current solutions.
- OCI chiplet enables data transmission over 100 meters, far surpassing the short reaches of electrical I/O.
- The innovation supports future scalability of CPU/GPU cluster connectivity and resource disaggregation.
- Practical applications of the OCI chiplet might be to tens of meters due to time-of-flight latency.
Insights
Intel's achievement in developing the first fully integrated optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet represents a significant technological leap. This chiplet's ability to support 64 channels at 32 Gbps over 100 meters addresses the need for higher bandwidth and lower power consumption in AI and HPC infrastructure. By integrating photonics directly with an Intel CPU, this innovation bypasses the limitations of traditional electrical I/O, which can only handle short distances effectively.
From a technological perspective, the most compelling aspect is the energy efficiency of the OCI chiplet, consuming only 5 pico-Joules per bit compared to 15 pJ/bit for traditional optical transceiver modules. This drastic reduction in power consumption not only makes the technology more sustainable but also fits well with the growing power demands of AI infrastructure. The implementation of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) within the chiplet, allowing multiple data streams on a single fiber, further emphasizes its advanced capabilities.
In the short term, this development could lead to significant performance improvements in data centers as companies seek to reduce latency and increase computational power. In the long term, it will be interesting to see how this technology scales and integrates with future CPUs, GPUs and other SoC (system-on-chip) solutions. Intel is positioning itself as a leader in optical I/O, which could drive partnerships and possibly licensing opportunities.
For investors, Intel's announcement is particularly noteworthy as it highlights the company's commitment to addressing the escalating demands of AI infrastructure. The OCI chiplet's introduction coincides with a significant trend where AI applications, especially large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, are rapidly expanding. By providing a solution that effectively increases bandwidth while reducing power consumption, Intel is positioning itself to capture a significant share of the AI and HPC markets, which are projected to grow substantially in the coming years.
From a market perspective, the potential for scalability and integration with next-generation CPUs and GPUs means that Intel could see a strong demand for these chiplets as industries move towards more efficient and powerful AI systems. The technology's compatibility with PCIe Gen5 and its potential for future enhancements make it a versatile solution that can adapt to evolving market needs.
However, investors should also consider the competitive landscape. Intel's advancements are impressive, but the company will need to continue innovating to stay ahead of competitors who are also pursuing similar opportunities in integrated photonics and AI infrastructure. Moreover, the actual market adoption rate will depend on how quickly data centers and HPC environments transition to using these advanced optical I/O solutions.
In summary, Intel's OCI chiplet presents a promising opportunity for market growth and competitive advantage, but the company will need to maintain its innovation trajectory and effectively market this technology to realize its full potential.
Intel’s optical compute interconnect chiplet is expected to revolutionize high-speed data processing for AI infrastructure.
Intel Corporation’s Integrated Photonics Solutions (IPS) Group has demonstrated the industry’s first fully integrated optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet co-packaged with an Intel CPU and running live data. Intel’s OCI chiplet enables co-packaged optical input/output in emerging AI infrastructure for data centers and high performance computing applications. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
“The ever-increasing movement of data from server to server is straining the capabilities of today’s data center infrastructure, and current solutions are rapidly approaching the practical limits of electrical I/O performance. However, Intel’s groundbreaking achievement empowers customers to seamlessly integrate co-packaged silicon photonics interconnect solutions into next-generation compute systems. Our OCI chiplet boosts bandwidth, reduces power consumption and increases reach, enabling ML workload acceleration that promises to revolutionize high-performance AI infrastructure.”
--Thomas Liljeberg, senior director, Product Management and Strategy, Integrated Photonics Solutions (IPS) Group
What It Does: This first OCI chiplet is designed to support 64 channels of 32 gigabits per second (Gbps) data transmission in each direction on up to 100 meters of fiber optics and is expected to address AI infrastructure’s growing demands for higher bandwidth, lower power consumption and longer reach. It enables future scalability of CPU/GPU cluster connectivity and novel compute architectures, including coherent memory expansion and resource disaggregation.
Why It Matters: AI-based applications are increasingly deployed globally, and recent developments in large language models (LLM) and generative AI are accelerating that trend. Larger and more efficient machine learning (ML) models will play a key role in addressing the emerging requirements of AI acceleration workloads. The need to scale future computing platforms for AI is driving exponential growth in I/O bandwidth and longer reach to support larger processing unit (CPU/GPU/IPU) clusters and architectures with more efficient resource utilization, such as xPU disaggregation and memory pooling.
Electrical I/O (i.e., copper trace connectivity) supports high bandwidth density and low power, but only offers short reaches of about one meter or less. Pluggable optical transceiver modules used in data centers and early AI clusters can increase reach at cost and power levels that are not sustainable with the scaling requirements of AI workloads. A co-packaged xPU optical I/O solution can support higher bandwidths with improved power efficiency, low latency and longer reach – exactly what AI/ML infrastructure scaling requires.
As an analogy, replacing electrical I/O with optical I/O in CPUs and GPUs to transfer data is like going from using horse carriages to distribute goods, limited in capacity and range, to using cars and trucks that can deliver much larger quantities of goods over much longer distances. This level of improved performance and energy cost is what optical I/O solutions like Intel’s OCI chiplet emerging bring to AI scaling.
How It Works: The fully Integrated OCI chiplet leverages Intel’s field-proven silicon photonics technology and integrates a silicon photonics integrated circuit (PIC), which includes on-chip lasers and optical amplifiers, with an electrical IC. The OCI chiplet demonstrated at OFC was co-packaged with an Intel CPU but can also be integrated with next-generation CPUs, GPUs, IPUs and other system-on-chips (SoCs).
This first OCI implementation supports up to 4 terabits per second (Tbps) bidirectional data transfer, compatible with peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) Gen5. The live optical link demonstration showcases a transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) connection between two CPU platforms over a single-mode fiber (SMF) patch cord. The CPUs generated and measured the optical Bit Error Rate (BER), and the demo showcases the Tx optical spectrum with 8 wavelengths at 200 gigahertz (GHz) spacing on a single fiber, along with a 32 Gbps Tx eye diagram illustrating strong signal quality.
The current chiplet supports 64 channels of 32 Gbps data in each direction up to 100 meters (though practical applications may be limited to tens of meters due to time-of-flight latency), utilizing eight fiber pairs, each carrying eight dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) wavelengths. The co-packaged solution is also remarkably energy efficient, consuming only 5 pico-Joules (pJ) per bit compared to pluggable optical transceiver modules at about 15 pJ/bit. This level of hyper-efficiency is critical for data centers and high-performance computing environments and could help address AI’s unsustainable power requirements.
About Intel’s Leadership in Silicon Photonics: As a market leader in silicon photonics, Intel leverages more than 25 years of internal research from Intel Labs, which pioneered integrated photonics. Intel was the first company to develop and ship silicon photonics-based connectivity products with industry-leading reliability at high volume to major cloud service providers.
Intel’s main differentiator is unparalleled integration using hybrid laser-on-wafer technology and direct integration, which yield higher reliability and lower costs. This unique approach enables Intel to deliver superior performance while maintaining efficiency. Intel’s robust, high-volume platform boasts shipping over 8 million PICs with over 32 million integrated on-chip lasers, showing a laser failures-in-time (FIT) rate of less than 0.1, a widely utilized measure of reliability that represents failure rates and how many failures occur.
These PICs were packaged in pluggable transceiver modules, deployed in large data center networks at major hyperscale cloud service providers for 100, 200, and 400 Gbps applications. Next generation, 200G/lane PICs to support emerging 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps applications are under development.
Intel is also implementing a new silicon photonics fab process node with state-of-the-art (SOA) device performance, higher density, better coupling and vastly improved economics. Intel continues to make advancements in on-chip laser and SOA performance, cost (greater than
What’s Next: Intel’s current OCI chiplet is a prototype. Intel is working with select customers to co-package OCI with their SOCs as an optical I/O solution.
Intel’s OCI chiplet represents a leap forward in high-speed data transmission. As the AI infrastructure landscape evolves, Intel remains at the forefront, driving innovation and shaping the future of connectivity.
More Context: Intel Silicon Photonics (Intel.com)
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.
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Laura Stadler
1-619-346-1170
laura.stadler@intel.com
Source: Intel Corporation
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