Working in collaboration with IBM, TE Connectivity and Senko Advanced Components, all of whom are providers of multi-terabit interconnect solutions, Ranovus has been able to create a second- generation CPO 2.0 configuration for the data centre.
Co-packaged Optics, or CPO, is an innovative approach that provides nx100Gbps PAM4 Optical I/O for Ethernet switch and ML/AI silicon in a single packaged assembly, which significantly reduces the cost and power consumption of the complete system.
At a time when data centre traffic is growing at an unprecedented pace, driven by advances in AI and Machine Learning, the networking infrastructure needs to be able to scale in capacity while maintaining its total power consumption and footprint.
The strategic collaboration, that was announced last year, between Ranovus, TE, IBM, and Senko, known as CPO 1.0, has enabled a multi-sourced solution to meet this market challenge.
CPO 2.0 looks to improve on CPO 1.0 while maintaining optical interoperability and brings a number of advantages to the ecosystem:
- 40% cost and power consumption savings through:
a.Eliminating the retimer function in the Odin Analog-Drive optical engine
b.Enabling a cost-effective single die solution with the Odin Analog-Drive optical engine
- Smaller footprint
- Reuse and Optimisation of existing 100G PAM4 and PCIe Ser/Des chips vs new investment in an XSR Ser/Des chip for data center applications.
The collaboration between the four companies looks to leverage: Ranovus's highly scalable Odin silicon photonics engine; IBM’s fibre V-groove interconnect packaging technology; TE Connectivity’s co-packaged (CP) fine pitch socket interposer technology which enables the integration of small chipset and optical engine component technologies into high-value co-package assemblies with reworkable and interoperable interfaces, and Senko's fibre optic connectivity solutions for optical coupling, on-board/mid-board, and faceplate support 100Gbps/lane and beyond Co-Packaged Optics equipment designs.
“We launched Odin, our next generation monolithic EPIC and laser platform for multi terabit Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) applications in data centres, in March 2020. The Odin platform is a low latency, high density, protocol agnostic monolithic optical engine that delivers massive optical interconnect bandwidth with industry-leading cost and power efficiency,” said Dr. Christoph Schulien, EVP of R&D and Systems at Ranovus. “The Odin Analog-Drive configuration eliminates the retimers in the CPO 1.0 configuration, which brings about a 40% cost and power reduction to the overall system.”
