Forum Talk Recap: Marvell | Highly Integrated Silicon Photonics Light Engines for Data Center Optical Interconnects

Speaker: Dr. Radha Nagarajan, SVP & CTO, Cloud Optics

Marvell

Topic: Highly Integrated Silicon Photonics Light Engines for Data Center Optical Interconnects

Event: SEMICON Taiwan 2024 International Silicon Photonics Forum

Date: 2024-09-03

• Evolution and applications of silicon photonics:

  • He discussed the importance of highly integrated silicon photonics light engines in data centers, emphasizing that they can effectively address the fast-growing data transfer demands of modern data centers and AI applications.

  • Optical interconnects in traditional data centers have a 25-year history, growing from 1Gbps to today's 100Gbps, with energy efficiency improving several-fold over the past decades.

• Power consumption and energy efficiency:

  • Dr. Nagarajan raised the power consumption problem facing data centers: about 3.5% of global electricity consumption is driven by AI-related data processing, a share projected to possibly reach 10% by 2030.

  • He stressed that future technology development must focus on reducing power consumption in data transfer and on improving energy efficiency through optical interconnects.

• Light engine design and integration:

  • He explained in detail the building blocks of a silicon photonics light engine, including transmitters, receivers, and modulators, and described how electronic and photonic components are merged within the light engine.

  • On 2D and 2.5D packaging, integration through a silicon interposer lets components couple more tightly, improving performance and lowering power consumption.

• Showcase of new technologies:

  • Dr. Nagarajan presented progress in optical interconnect technology, such as the design of 100G light engine modules and the recently launched 6.4T light engine, which uses 16 channels at 200Gbps each.

  • He emphasized that these technologies can support data centers' higher bandwidth demands and will play an important role in future XPU (accelerated processing unit) and power interfaces.