The popularization of silicon photonics technology: experience the progress of silicon light-emitting technology
Regarding the “silicon photonics†technology for realizing optical transmission on silicon wafers, its practicality and R & D advancement speeds have exceeded expectations. Among them, Japan's progress is particularly remarkable. Japan leads the world in the miniaturization of high-density integration technology and modulators, and its achievements in the development of CMOS-compatible light-emitting technology and photonic crystals have also shook the world. The application range of silicon photonics technology is expected to expand from the current main use-data transmission between circuit boards to the transmission between chips and within the chip. It is expected that applications in this area will be practical around 2020.
"Silicon Photonics" has entered the stage of comprehensive popularization. Using this technology, most of the various optical transmission elements can be integrated on the silicon chip through CMOS technology Note 1).
Note 1) At present, only the light source needs to use compound semiconductor laser elements.
The main current use of silicon photonics technology is an optical transceiver IC embedded in an active optical cable (AcTIve OpTIcal Cable, AOC) * (Figure 1). AOC is rapidly expanding in the fields of supercomputers, data centers, and transmission devices of communication operators, and is an optical cable used for high-speed connection of boards and equipment.
Figure 1: The application range of optical transmission will be expanded from board to chip to chip to chip
This picture shows the field of optical transmission introduction in the recent and near future. The communication technology between server boards called AOC (active optical cable) is mostly the optical transmission using silicon photonics technology. It is expected that optical transmission will also be used for inter-chip transmission, global wiring between CPU cores and CPU cores. (Photograph: (a) for Microsemi (formerly Zarlink Semiconductor), (b) Luxtera, and (c) Altera)
* AOC (AcTIve OpTIcal Cable) = optical cable with optical transceiver module. Due to high durability and reliability, around 2008, the demand for this optical cable in the high-performance computer market began to expand. According to data released by the survey company Global Information, AOC's global sales in 2011 were 305,000, with sales of $ 70 million. The company predicts that sales in 2016 will reach 786,000, and sales will expand to 175 million US dollars.
The reason why silicon photonics can achieve such results in the field of optical transceivers for AOC is because it can greatly reduce costs through mass production, which is the same as semiconductor products using CMOS technology. Whereas the previous AOC used discrete components based on compound semiconductors, the price was higher.
The venture-centric market will change. It is Luxtera, a venture company established by the California Institute of Technology, and Kotura, which is also a venture company. Luxtera, which began mass production around 2008, announced in February 2012 that "1 million units of optical ICs with a transmission capacity of 10 Gbit / s have been sold." Kotura also announced in February 2013, "Sales of optical ICs have doubled from the previous year, equivalent to 60,000 channels per month." From these shipment data, the products of these two companies account for a considerable portion of the AOC market (Note 2).
Note 2) Luxtera cooperates with Freescale Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics, and Kotura cooperates with Oracle and other companies in technology development and manufacturing.
However, the market will usher in huge changes. Because companies such as Cisco Systems and Intel have entered the market one after another. In the future AOC, which will form a 100Gbit / sec transmission capacity in the market, it is expected that silicon photonics will take the lead.
Cisco moves very quickly. The company acquired the venture company Lightwire for US $ 271 million in February 2012. In October of the same year, it released the “Cisco CPAK†optical transceiver specification “Cisco CPAK†that supports 100Gbit / sec based on silicon photonics technology. Transmission device for optical transceiver modules with specifications.
Intel also released AOC using silicon photonics technology in January 2013, which supports the data center industry standard "Open Compute Project" dominated by Facebook.
The trend of optical transmission between chips
It is expected that the silicon photonics market will continue to expand in the future. The market bearing AOC's "future" has already begun to emerge. AOC is mainly used for large-capacity data transmission between "circuit boards", and in the future, "inter-chip" applications such as between microprocessors on circuit boards and between microprocessors and memories will be practical. IBM and Intel are now advancing development, with the goal of using it for supercomputers and servers around 2020.
Figure 2: Low power consumption of optical transmission and electrical transmission with 1cm as the boundary
If the transmission distance is more than 1cm, the current optical transmission technology consumes less power than electrical transmission. The power consumption of optical transmission is mainly consumed by the electro-optical conversion and photoelectric conversion of the optical transceiver. Recently, the size of the optical transceiver has been greatly reduced, so the power consumption has also been reduced.
The application of optical transmission began with long-distance communication, and then its use was expanded to short-distance communication, replacing electrical transmission. At this point, light transmission using silicon photons is the same. It is expected that silicon photonics technology must also be used for data transmission between "CPU cores" within the microprocessor in the future.
Recently, the application of silicon photonics technology between chips has gained popularity, mainly because the power consumption of optical transceivers made with silicon photonics has been reduced. Generally speaking, the shorter the distance, the less power is required, and even if the distance is shortened, the power will not be reduced too much. Therefore, the two use the transmission distance with the same power consumption as the demarcation point. Recently, the power consumption of silicon photons for light transmission and electric transmission is basically the same at a transmission distance of 1cm, so it is also expected to use light transmission at a much shorter distance (Figure 2).
For example, in March 2013 IBM used silicon photonics technology to develop an optical transceiver IC with a power consumption of 1pJ / bit. It is estimated that the minimum power consumption of electrical transmission is about 150fJ (0.15pJ) / bit at a transmission distance of 1cm (Figure 3) 1). Although there is still a gap of several times, but if it is limited to the functions of optical transmission, the technology that consumes 2 or 3 digits less than IBM's prototype has also been developed.
Figure 3: In the not-too-distant future, the transmission between microprocessor cores must use optical transmission
This figure shows the power consumption of electrical transmission technology and optical transmission technology such as transmission between CPU cores of a microprocessor. In the future, high-performance microprocessors will not be able to meet the requirements for power consumption by electric transmission alone. In the transmission at a distance of 1cm, the power consumption of optical transmission is basically the same as that of electrical transmission. There have also been examples where the power consumption of each component has been significantly reduced compared to electrical methods. (Photograph: IBM)
In terms of use, the expectation of silicon photonic light transmission is also increasing. With the advancement of multi-core and multi-core for the purpose of improving the speed of microprocessors, it is necessary to significantly increase the memory bandwidth and the data transmission capacity between CPU cores. But multi-core will cause the transmission distance between CPU cores to increase. Moreover, the transmission capacity must be expanded to a level comparable to the global wiring within the core. For electrical transmission, the conditions are becoming more and more demanding. For silicon photonic optical transmission, which is in the development stage, its power consumption needs to be greatly reduced in the future.
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