Developments in hybrid electronics that combine traditional and optical technologies have been ongoing for a long time. The startup Ayar Labs and its advancements became known back Now, the company is ready to launch a serial product, details of which were shared .
The efforts are focused on creating an optical interconnect system to replace current SerDes technologies. The company’s first official product was the Terabit PHY chiplet, or TeraPHY for short.
The chiplet uses a 45-nm RF SOI process and has an area of less than 50 mm². It communicates with other components in the TeraPHY package through 24 AIB channels, with a maximum bandwidth of 960 GT/s (gigatransfers per second). Electron-optical conversion is handled by special waveguides with a system of ring resonators. There are 10 of them in the chiplet, and the total bandwidth reaches 2.56 Tbps.
A SuperNova laser of its own design is used as the external light source. The current version of SuperNova supports up to 16 wavelengths and up to 256 channels, with a total bandwidth of 8.192 Tbps.
While we are currently talking about prototypes, the available samples of Stratix 10 with the new chiplets on board are fully operational. The use of TeraPHY will enhance energy efficiency by increasing bandwidth while maintaining the same power consumption.
The technology has a bright future ahead, as samples of lasers with 32 wavelengths already exist, and there are ongoing developments for a laser that uses 64 wavelengths. Ayar Labs announced its plans back at SC19, and its sample shipping program to partners will begin early in the first quarter of this year.
Source: 3dnews.ru
