Intel developing optical chip-to-chip interconnects

[William Gaatjes]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Intel developing optical chip-to-chip interconnects

Intel Corp. is studying optical interconnects with an eye toward replacing chip-to-chip electrical interconnects in order to overcome looming bandwidth issues as microprocessors with an increasing number of cores usher in the era of tera-scale computing.

http://www.eetimes.com/news/se...l;?articleID=213900581

I'm pretty sure Intel made it public knowledge they started developing optical interconnects some 4 or 5 years ago if not even longer than that.

So, yeah I know this is actually not new news, and EETimes has taken a flair for the sensational headlines lately, but it is nice to see the efforts at Intel continued onwards toward eventual productization.

I wonder how much latency between the IMC and ram dimms could be shaved off if they used optical interconnects instead of PCB copper traces.

The best thing about optical interconnects is that they use photons instead of electrons, i.e. no charge involved with the signal carrier. That means no capacitance issues with the board design. Nice.

Yay

I remember i had the discussion with myocardia once when i proposed a mainboard assembled like a gfx card where the memory was soldered on the pcb to reduce the latency.
We ended with the optical discussion.


optical




Intel has been doing research on this for years. They had a breakthrough in 2004.
The link is in the post. Not handy so i will post it here :

optical cavity Intel


edit : more links

Intel pioneers silicon laser technology

IBM reveals core-to-core optical dream in progress

The Common System Interface: Intel's Future Interconnect

Optical interconnect startup raises $10 million

 

[William Gaatjes]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
Yeah think about how long Intel took to replace their FSB topology with QPI. QPI has an equally long life ahead of it before it will be replaced, either with an all the more superior electrical bus interface or potentially with an optical interconnect interface if it is ready for productization at that time.

I highly doubt Otellini will still be CEO of Intel when this technology debuts. This is long-range research just now getting to the inflection point where it is transitioning into the development phase. Hence the refresher on it's existence to the public domain.

I have no confidential insight into the development and productization timelines for this technology, but given the typical pace that this stuff moves along at I'd say we won't see it debut in commercial products for another decade.

It's first use will be in a leading edge flagship supercomputer for the DOD. When we see that system announced we'll be 2-3 yrs from hardware, when we see hardware installed and operating we'll be another 3-4 yrs away from seeing it debut on the consumer market. Just my opinion, I don't know anything.

For as far as i know, qpi is designed to work immediatly with an optic physical layer. I read somewhere that with qpi all they have to is replace the physical layer.