MICHAEL LEBBY PICS
The capacity for optical signal information traveling down fibres needs to be increased; and the data centres, where the optical routing and switching takes place, need to deal with higher amounts of information. This places a further constraint for the industry as the increasing traffic also increases power consumption which is a well-known Achilles Heel for the data centre industry.
for the industry. A significant part of the design factor involves optical modulators. An optical modulator in general, switches and modulates light, and there are millions of these devices on the internet or optical network architecture today albeit at slower speeds and high voltage levels. This has led the industry to look for faster optical modulators that can operate at 200G with sub-1V voltage levels so that power consumption is significantly reduced. One of these solutions that is very exciting is the use of electro- optic polymers for polymer-based optical modulators. Polymers offer a heterogeneous solution for a PIC as the material is organic, and can be spun or dropped onto an existing silicon wafer in a standard silicon fabrication plant. Already, polymer modulators have enhanced and ‘turbo-boosted’ silicon photonic PIC platforms with less than 1V drive 200G lanes. Future optical modulator designs are planned to address 400G and 800G lanes. These results and the roadmap to higher speed lanes with polymer modulators exceed incumbent semiconductor technologies being used on the internet today and enhance emerging architectures with increased speed and lowered power consumption . With polymer optical modulator 3dB bandwidths that exceed 100GHz, which have been measured to over 250GHz, electro-optic polymers are positioned very well to enable next generation modulators over the next decade. In addition, polymer modulators with drive voltages below 1V, provide power savings that the hyperscalers are always looking for. ELECTRO-OPTIC POLYMER MODULATOR PICS Lightwave Logic Inc., sources and creates organic materials to create a class of electro-optic polymers called Perkinamine®. The company starts with its own proprietary designed organic chromophores and these are deposited onto a silicon chip with silicon slots to add an optical modulator function. The company’s polymer materials, and the integrated photonic silicon that are applied to them to are very reliable in performance which positions them well for displacing incumbent semiconductor technologies as well as other exotic material technologies being considered for high speed, low power modulators. Polymer modulator devices are
formed on a silicon-based chip roughly a few millimeters on each side where the Perkinamine® chromophore electro-optic polymer is deposited. These chips represent the ‘optical engine’ of a fibre optic transceiver. Electro-optic polymers have an inherent high-performance advantage which allows them to extend out in higher performance over future- generation products. It is as if Mother Nature is working with the technology platform and this creates a roadmap headroom for future generations of hyperscaler equipment. SUMMARY Would Alan Turing be excited with G-AI, data centres and photonics PIC chips today? I believe Alan would have been extremely excited. In an age where folks are designing technology solutions to match computational processing needs, I think Alan would have risen to the challenge and create not just a tool for code breaking ciphers, but more advanced tools to help with the demands of G-AI and growth in electronic computations, communication, and machine learning. From Alan Turing’s perspective, our future could not be brighter; we have grand challenges ahead, and we have the motivation to utilize our tool kits to meet those challenges. One example we discussed is electro-optic polymers – I’m sure there will be others, however, this is one excellent candidate to move the needle forward for all of us.
DATACENTRES AND THE INTERNET
As G-AI is integrating deeper within our daily activities with new applications to make us more efficient, we must look at the consequences as new tools to proliferate and introduce machine learning to the mass population. We are seeing hyperscaler data centres being upgraded today through increased capital expenditures in a fashion that the industry has not seen for a couple of decades. While this feels like the internet ‘bubble’ of 2000, we don’t know if the trend is bubble-like as we are in a growth stage. What we do know from history, is that in 2000, the markets for the internet bubble collapsed from poor growth and business, however, today we are seeing hyperscaler data centre companies already investing in updating their equipment with strong confidence. This effect is expected to become the start of a growth driver for electronic computational processing chips and indirectly, photonics PIC chips for optical interconnect over the next decades. With a photonics perspective, we can now see that data centre operators have ignored the assumed next incremental photonics bandwidth standard of 400 Gigabit per second, and are focusing on 800Gbps, 1.6Tbps (or 1600Gbps) and 3.2Tbps today. Only two years ago, many market analysist covering data centres and more specifically pluggable optical transceivers, were forecasting huge growth in 400Gbps as the main vehicle for client side hyperscaler traffic. Data centres were looking at 4 channel 100G lanes (for an aggregate of 400Gbps) and 8 channel 50G lanes (also for an aggregate of 400Gbps) as solutions to support 400Gbps traffic. Today, this has changed substantially: market forecasts for 400G are flat if not declining, and today’s focus is on 800G using 200G lanes, with 400G and 800G lanes expected soon. Creating a 4 channel 200G lane optical transceiver is a challenge
Dr Michael Lebby, Chief Executive Officer, Lightwave Logic Inc.
www.opticalconnectionsnews.com
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ISSUE 37 | Q2 2024
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