Meeting 112 SerDes Based System Design Challenges


The need for higher bandwidth networking equipment as well as connectivity in the cloud and hyperscale data centers is driving the switch technology transition from 25Tb/s (terabytes) to 51Tb/s and soon to 100Tb/s. The industry has chosen Ethernet to drive the switch market, using 112G SerDes or PHY technology today and 224G SerDes in the future. This article describes how designers can overcom... » read more

Co-Packaged Optics And The Evolution Of Switch/Optical Interconnects In Data Centers


Driven by a need to reduce power and increase bandwidth density in data center network switches and other devices, the data networking industry is moving toward adoption of co-packaged optics (CPO). This paper provides a brief overview of the history of copper and optical interconnects, the limitations of existing interconnect solutions, and the future of co-packaged optics, including the benef... » read more

Will Co-Packaged Optics Replace Pluggables?


As optical connections work their way deeper into the data center, a debate is underway. Is it better to use pluggable optical modules or to embed lasers deep into advanced packages? There are issues of convenience, power, and reliability driving the discussion, and an eventual winner isn’t clear yet. “The industry is definitely embracing co-packaged optics,” said James Pond, principal... » read more

Data Center Evolution: From Pluggable To Co-Packaged Optics


A torrent of data traffic is growing at an exponential rate driven by applications including 5G, AI/ML, video streaming, online gaming, ADAS and more. Handling this data traffic are hyperscale data centers that have grown to over 500 in number worldwide with a third as many in the pipeline. To scale computing resources to the growing data demands, hyperscale data centers deploy fiber optics thr... » read more

Data Center Scaling Requires New Interface Architectures


You can pick your favorite data points, but the bottom line is global data traffic is growing at an exponential rate driven by a confluence of megatrends. 5G networks are making possible billions of AI-powered IoT devices untethered from wired networks. Machine learning’s voracious appetite for enormous data sets is skyrocketing. Data intensive video streaming for both entertainment and busin... » read more

Enabling Chiplet And Co-Packaged Optics Architectures With 112G XSR SerDes


Conventional chip designs are struggling to achieve the scalability, as well as power, performance, and area (PPA), that are demanded of leading-edge designs. With the slowing of Moore’s Law, high complexity ASICs increasingly bump up against reticle limits. The demise of Dennard scaling means power consumption is a growing challenge. In this context, disaggregated architectures such as chipl... » read more

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