ANTONY SAVVAS CO-PACKAGED OPTICS
have resulted in interoperable products being available from a wide variety of suppliers that customers can be confident will work together, providing them with choice, the security of supply and shorter time to market. Our collaboration with Inphi will help our customers to enjoy a diverse and open ecosystem and interoperable best-of-breed technologies from a variety of suppliers.” Ranovus is another company building alliances. CEO Arabzadeh says, “We support two variants of CPO. CPO ‘1.0’ is based on a digital-drive version of our optical engine Odin, which includes a retimer in the package to be compliant with OIF standards being ratified in 2021.” The firm has also developed an analogue- drive CPO ‘2.0’ solution that leverages the standard 100G PAM4 SerDes chip in the Ethernet switch ASIC, which eliminates the need for a retimer in the Odin optical engine. This “innovation in CPO architecture”, says Arabzadeh, results in a “cost and power consumption reduction of 40% when compared to the PMO”. And in terms of getting to a true volume production scenario we are working with three industry leaders in components packaging.” IBM is providing optical interconnect technologies that enable automated and scalable assembly for co-packaged optics. TE Connectivity is contributing its CP (co-packaged) fine pitch socket system combined with its thermal bridge technology, which is a “key enabler” to the high-density packaging and “extreme thermal management” necessary for co- packaging, said Arabzadeh. Finally, SENKO Advanced Components completes the CPO design with fibre-optic connectivity solutions for on-board/mid- board and faceplate coupling. It’s clear that the CPO market is covering all the bases to give itself every chance of becoming an efficient processing and effective power management solution for various applications, with evolving standardisation efforts and the first commercial technology partnerships already in place.
25.6T Humboldt switching ASIC is expected to hit the market at the end of next year. And scaling up, the vendor’s 52.T CPO Bailly offering will be available in 2023. Soon after Broadcom, Cisco and Inphi got together to provide a CPO solution starting at 51.2T, with first deployments expected in 2024. The pair are also calling for an “open ecosystem” (see below) when it comes to development and integration, to help to further kick-start the market alongside other switching chip and transceiver vendors. CIR’s Gasman said these developments must be considered “positive”, but warned there has to be some “healthy scepticism” too - despite the cost-effectiveness of CPO. He said, “Anyone who thinks the datacom world will easily withdraw from the pluggable solution is naïve to say the least - pluggables are so convenient after all and OBO (on-board optics) and CPO simply don’t offer good alternatives to pluggability. So you shouldn’t bet your life savings on CPO in switches, at least not quite yet. Although it is undeniable that silicon core switching power is increasing at maybe three times SerDes power and the limits of conventional approaches to switching chips will be felt by the industry at some point.”
started in some quarters. The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO), for instance, recently announced the creation of the Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) Working Group, which will encourage the adoption of co-packaged optics by developing technical guidance and standards for CPO implementations. This effort - a collaboration of end users and technology suppliers - focuses on the optical connectivity and remote laser sources necessary to make co-packaged optics a reality in hyperscale data centres. Mark Filer, principal engineer for Azure cloud hardware architecture at Microsoft, is behind the initiative. He said, “It is critical that the industry develops standards and guidance to enable a robust co-packaging ecosystem. This is the perfect forum to leverage expertise to address the optical
connectivity challenges for the co- packaging of optics with ASICs.”
Lawrence Gasman, president and owner of CIR said, “In 2021, two things are going to happen. First, there will be a lot more standardisation work being done, not just by COBO and OIF (Optical Internetworking Forum) - who are already are in the game - but from the IEEE and some packaging industry organisations. Secondly, we expect to see 800G modules using CPO to make a commercial appearance in big data centres, with CPO-based HPC and interconnects becoming a thing.” In the coming decade, Gasman says, CPO will become a “dominant” enabling technology for cloud provider data centres, accounting for almost two-thirds of CPO product revenues by 2030. As the data rates for inter-machine and inter-building data communications increase beyond 400G, it will “be hard” for traditional pluggable optics to keep up with CPO in terms of cost effectiveness, he says.
ECOSYSTEM
Rakesh Chopra, Cisco distinguished engineer and fellow, said, “Some
technology transitions are easy to spot and their adoption is inevitable. The only question is when the transition happens and how quickly it will be adopted. Co- packaged optics, or in-package optics (IPO) depending on your terminology, is one of those technologies. Bringing optics and switch silicon together in the same package creates a synergy between once disjoint and independent technologies, thereby saving significant power.” Co-operation is needed to drive the opportunity forward, he stressed. “Cisco believes that any such disruptive technology can only succeed when the right ecosystem is in place. The industry has a long history of standardisation efforts such as the OIF, IEEE and MSAs (multi-source agreements), which have defined the standards for pluggable optical modules. These efforts
PRODUCTS AND INDUSTRY ALLIANCES
To drive the market forward, as well as standardisation efforts, new products and industry alliances are forming. In January 2021, Broadcom announced new next- gen switching platforms based on CPO. Its
Mark Filer, principal engineer for Azure cloud hardware architecture at Microsoft
Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus
Lawrence Gasman, president CIR
Rakesh Chopra, Cisco distinguished engineer and fellow
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| ISSUE 24 | Q2 2021
www.opticalconnectionsnews.com
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