The collaboration looks to leverage:
Ranovus’ Odin silicon photonics engine which incorporates the company’s in multi-wavelength Quantum Dot Laser (QDL), 100Gbps Silicon Photonics based Micro Ring Resonator modulators and photodetectors, 100Gbps Driver, 100Gbps TIA and control Integrated Circuits in one IC.
IBM’s fibre V-groove interconnect packaging technology which interfaces optical fibres to silicon photonics devices. This process makes use of passive alignment techniques and achieves low insertion loss across a wide spectral range in both the O-band and C-band regimes. The solution is scalable in physical channel count and the automated process provides a path to high-volume manufacturing of co-packaged optics.
TE’s co-packaged (CP) fine pitch socket interposer technology, which enables integration of small chipset and optical engine component technologies into high-value co-package assemblies with reworkable and interoperable interfaces. The signal integrity performance of the CP fine pitch socket interposer technology can be critical to 100 Gbps high density electrical packaging requirements.
The integration of TE’s thermal bridge technology completes the assembly by providing a solution for thermal management of the switch, serializer/deserializer (SerDes), and optics necessary for high reliability and long operating life.
Senko’s fibre optic connectivity solutions for optical coupling, on-board/mid-board, and faceplate to support 100Gbps/lane and beyond Co-Packaged Optics equipment designs. These include low profile and precision fibre coupler assemblies, micro sized on-/mid-board connectors, reflow compatible connector assemblies, and space saving connector options for faceplate. These will provide more efficiency, scalability, and flexibility in designs for Co-Packaged Optics equipment.
With data centre traffic growing at an unprecedented pace, the networking infrastructure needs to scale in capacity and today's disaggregated Ethernet switch IC and optical module architecture does not provide the scalability that's required.
The co-packaging of optics and Ethernet switch ICs is seen as a natural next step to reduce the power consumption burden of the electrical I/Os in data centre networking equipment.
The transition of the Ethernet switch IC SER/DES from 50Gbps to 100Gbps, in 25.6Tbps and 51.2Tbps switch configurations, presents a unique inflection point in the architecture of the Ethernet switch systems.
