Photonics: The Former And Future Solution


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about where photonics is in the hype cycle and its secure role in data centers, with James Pond, fellow at Ansys; Gilles Lamant, distinguished engineer at Cadence; and Mitch Heins, business development manager for photonic solutions at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. [L-R]: Ansys’ Pond, Cadence�... » 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

Power/Performance Bits: March 3


Optimizing fiber networks Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology are working towards reducing the energy consumption of fiber optic communications before the amount of electricity required by the Internet becomes too great to manage. To improve overall efficiency, the team tackled several aspects of fiber optic cables. One of the major energy drains the team identified was the err... » read more

System Bits: July 10


Light waves run on silicon-based chips Researchers at the University of Sydney’s Nano Institute and Singapore University of Technology and Design collaborated on manipulating light waves on silicon-based microchips to keep coherent data as it travels thousands of miles on fiber-optic cables. Such waves—whether a tsunami or a photonic packet of information—are known as solitons. The... » read more

New Challenges For Data Centers


Rita Horner, senior technical marketing manager in Synopsys’ Solutions Group, looks at the impact of a significant rise in data, why this often leads to big cost increases, and where the bottlenecks are occurring. » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 16


On-chip modulator Researchers at Harvard SEAS and Nokia Bell Labs boosted shrunk down an important component of optoelectronics with an on-chip modulator that is 100 times smaller and 20 times more efficient than current lithium niobite (LN) modulators. Lithium niobate modulators form the basis of modern telecommunications, converting electronic data to optical information in fiber optic ca... » read more

Ayar Labs: Faster I/O


Startup AyarLabs is using a combination of high-bandwidth fiberoptics, low-cost CMOS fabrication and careful target selection to strike efficiently at the datacenter's worst bottleneck. "Moore's Law only covers the processor, not how we move data in and out of it during processing or how to get the processor and memory working at the same speed," according to Alexandra Wright-Gladstein, co-f... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 31


Software enables cars to auto-report diagnostics Thanks to researchers at MIT, it may soon be possible to hop into a ride-share car, glance at a smartphone app, and tell the driver that the car’s left front tire needs air, its air filter should be replaced next week, and its engine needs two new spark plugs. [caption id="attachment_409967" align="alignnone" width="300"] A new smartphone a... » read more