IBM’s silicon photonics technology aims to speed up cloud and Big Data applications

First fully integrated silicon chip to use high-speed pulses of light instead of slow electrical signals
May 12, 2015

This cassette carries several hundred chips intended for 100 Gb/s transceivers, diced from wafers fabricated with IBM CMOS integrated nanophotonics technology (credit: IBM)

IBM announced today (May 12) what is says in the first fully integrated silicon chip to use high-speed pulses of light instead of slow electrical signals over wires. That means the chip will be able to move data at rapid speeds and longer distances in future computing systems.

The silicon photonics chip is wavelength-multiplexed, meaning it can transmit multiple wavelengths of light. IBM says they will soon be able to start manufacturing 100 Gb/s optical transceivers. This will allow datacenters to offer greater data rates and bandwidth for cloud computing and Big Data applications.

“Just as fiber optics revolutionized the telecommunications industry by speeding up the flow of data … this technology is designed to make future computing systems faster and more energy efficient,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research.

Silicon photonics uses tiny optical components to send light pulses to transfer large volumes of data at very high speed between computer chips in servers, large datacenters, and supercomputers, overcoming the limitations of congested data traffic and high-cost traditional interconnects. The system integrates different optical components side-by-side with electrical circuits on a single silicon chip using sub-100nm semiconductor technology.

Silicon photonics will transform future datacenters

One important use of the technology will be in next-generation datacenters. It promises to allow computer hardware components, whether a few centimeters or a few kilometers apart, to seamlessly and efficiently communicate with each other at high speeds using optical interconnects. This disaggregated and flexible design of datacenters will help reduce the cost of space and energy, while increasing performance and analysis capabilities for users ranging from social media companies to financial services to universities, IBM suggests.

Most of the optical interconnect solutions employed within datacenters as of today are based upon vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) technology, bandwidth-distance limitations, IBM says.

IBM engineers in New York and Zurich, Switzerland and IBM Systems Unit have demonstrated a reference design targeting datacenter interconnects with a range up to two kilometers. This chip demonstrates transmission and reception of high-speed data using four laser “colors,” each operating as an independent 25 Gb/s optical channel. Within a full transceiver design, these four channels can be wavelength multiplexed on-chip to provide 100 Gb/s aggregate bandwidth over a duplex single-mode fiber, thus minimizing the cost of the installed fiber plant within the datacenter.

Further details will be presented by IBM at the 2015 Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (May 10–15) in San Jose.

Silicon photonics is among the efforts of IBM’s $3 billion investment to push the limits of chip technology to meet the emerging demands of cloud and Big Data systems.


Abstract of Demonstration of Error Free Operation Up To 32 Gb/s From a CMOS Integrated Monolithic Nano-Photonic Transmitter

We present a monolithic CMOS Integrated Nano Photonic transmitter with a link sensitivity comparable to a 25 Gb/s commercial reference transmitter, exhibiting a 5.2 dB extinction ratio, 4.9 dB insertion loss, and error free operation up to 32 Gb/s.