On the Optical Fiber Communications Convention (OFC) 2024, Intel gave us a very fascinating glimpse at what may very well be the way forward for chip and interconnect design. The Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) chiplet integrates a Photonics Built-in Circuit (PIC) with {an electrical} IC. The chiplet was packaged with an Intel CPU and proven working stay information.
Intel believes this know-how is a sport changer because it meets rising demand for greater bandwidth throughout better distances, whereas utilizing much less energy. In fact, the preliminary functions shall be used for AI infrastructure and HPC environments, the place scalability issues throughout racks and clusters have gotten more and more obvious in massive scale deployments.
Intel’s press launch included the next assertion: “As an analogy, changing electrical I/O with optical I/O in CPUs and GPUs to switch information is like going from utilizing horse-drawn carriages to distribute items, restricted in capability and vary, to utilizing vehicles and vehicles that may ship a lot bigger portions of products over for much longer distances. This stage of improved efficiency and vitality value is what optical I/O options like Intel’s OCI chiplet rising deliver to AI scaling.” That tells us the place Intel believes the way forward for interconnect know-how lies.
Though the OCI is a prototype, it already helps as much as 4 terabits per second (Tbps) bidirectional information switch throughout distances so far as 100 meters. Importantly, the know-how is appropriate with PCIe 5.0, making it comparatively simple to combine into current PCIe appropriate infrastructure.
By way of energy financial savings, Intel claims its answer is far more environment friendly, consuming solely 5 pico-joules (pJ) per bit in comparison with pluggable optical transceiver modules at about 15 pJ/bit.
The OCI chiplet will be built-in with future CPUs, GPUs and SoCs. Ought to the know-how attain the patron house within the years forward—and if it takes off within the enterprise house there’s little motive to doubt it would—then PCs within the years forward might look very completely different.
Think about with the ability to set up a GPU that does not require a PCIe slot. You might set up it wherever in a appropriate case, and join it to a motherboard by way of a cable with none lack of efficiency. That ought to result in improved cooling efficiency and probably easier (and cheaper) motherboard designs.
Intel says it has developed a brand new silicon photonics fabrication course of and it expects the know-how to scale from the 4 Tbps vary to tens of Tbps sooner or later. Chips with optical interconnects and glass substrates seemingly simply bought a step nearer.
Thrilling stuff!
