Why silicon photonics are considered the source of the next information revolution
It is possible that someday by means of silicon photonics the entire huge data center can be turned into a single hyperscale computer, and if we take into account the successes achieved by that time in the field of artificial intelligence, it is easy to imagine something like the Ocean on Solaris, described by Stanislav Lem Solaris (novel). In the meantime, the current servers and data centers resemble PCs in their state when they were before SATA and USB appeared: inside - stale tape cables, outside - serial and parallel ports for the mouse, keyboard and speakers. But already in 2025, the picture will become different: everything will be unified and connected via fiber, which will provide a qualitatively different approach to a number of tasks, in particular, to scaling and high-performance computing. And all this will be possible thanks to advances in the field of silicon photonics.
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Silicon photonics is the synergy of two groups of technologies - electronics and optics, which allows you to fundamentally change the data transmission system at distances from millimeters to thousands of kilometers. In importance, the result of the introduction of silicon photonics is compared with the invention of semiconductors, because its implementation allows for many years to come to preserve the effect of Moore's Law, which forms the basis for the development of information and communication technologies.
Those who are interested in the fundamental foundations of this direction can recommend the popular science book Daryl Inniss, Roy Rubenstein "Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Next Information Revolution" published in 2017. More serious introductions to silicon photonics are the book Silicon Photonics III: Systems and Applications by a group of authors and Silicon Photonics: An Introduction (Graham T. Reed, Andrew P. Knights). There are also several useful materials on this topic on the website of Mellanox[1][2].
How does it work
If you limit yourself to practical applications to computing, then, as in the case of electronics, optics and solid-state physics can be left aside. For understanding at the system technical level, the most superficial information about the subject is enough. It would seem that everything is obvious: the sequence of electrical signals is converted by the transmitter T into a sequence of optical signals. Through the cable, it enters the receiver R, which returns them to their electrical shape. Several types of lasers can be used as light sources, and single or multimodal cables can be used for transmission.
But do not forget about the scientific and engineering complexity of the problems that arise when implementing the principles of silicon photonics. It can be judged at least by the fact that the first experimental work in this direction dates back to the mid-80s of the twentieth century, attempts at commercial development were made in the early 2000s, and the first commercial results were obtained only after 2016. Forty years... Despite the fact that the practical use of fiber-optic communication began in the mid-sixties, and experimental work - much earlier.
The essence of the problem of silicon-based materials is that it is impossible to work at the same frequencies that are used in fiber optics, and it is almost impossible to use alternative materials for economic reasons. Enormous investments have been made in existing semiconductor manufacturing technologies. To implement the principles of silicon photonics, they need to be adapted to existing technologies. The solution can be to include miniature receivers and transmitters in the microcircuits and lay appropriate waveguides between them. This is the most difficult engineering and technical task, which as of 2017 has been solved.
Before others, Intel managed to do this - the corporation has already offered its products to the market. Announcements from IBM should soon be expected, followed by Mellanox, Broadcom, Ciena, Juniper and a number of other major companies. At the same time, startups that have achieved success are being bought up. The process went, but not quickly. The difficulties are caused by the fact that the creation of new products requires significant funds and time, which gives advantages to the largest vendors.
Four levels of communications
Silicon photonics technologies today allow you to create 100 Gb Ethernet, and in the foreseeable future 400 Gb and 1 Tbit. Such data exchange speeds open up opportunities for the convergence of modern architectures into qualitatively new ones - at the Rack-Scale Architecture (RSA) level and at the ESSA data center (Extended-scale system architecture) level. The limit of the first is limited to the so-called hearth (one or more racks), the second covers the entire data center. The components of these infrastructures communicate remotely over the PCIe bus interconnects at a distance.
By means of silicone photonics, a hierarchical communication system is created, divided into 4 levels:
Level 1 "Chip": The introduction of silicon photonics technologies inside the chip is interesting for several reasons:
- There are significantly more chips than racks, therefore, the need for receivers and transmitters is great, and these technologies will develop rapidly.
- The exchange rates outside the chip will significantly increase, so the principles of system design may significantly change.
- In the long term, it can be imagined that optical communications can be used between chip components, for example, for exchange between cores. But at such short distances, copper will retain its position for a long time.
Level 2 "Platform": The platform for building data centers can be traditional 19-inch racks or assemblies of them, called pods (from the English pod - shell, container, assembly of rocket engines). The atoms from which platforms are assembled become individual chips, in the past there are components such as servers and classic motherboards. The transition from servers to platforms is called server disaggregation, it is devoted to the hotel publication of TAdviser.
Level 3 "Data Center": Further promotion of disaggregation to the level of data center will be possible with an increase in the range of silicon photonics at a distance of 500 meters to 10 kilometers.
A data center can be considered as a single computing entity and assemble servers on demand.
Level 4 "Telecom": When transmitting data over long distances and within the urban environment (metro), optics have been used for a long time and successfully. The use of silicon photonics will not lead to any radical changes, but the efficiency and quality may increase.
Analysts estimate that a lull is ending in 2018 and a tipping point will come in 2019-21, followed by widespread adoption of silicon photonics.
History
2022: Photonics cluster created in Moscow
On October 24, 2022, it was announced the creation of an intersectoral photonics cluster in Moscow. It was launched on the basis of the Moscow Innovation Cluster. Read more here.
2021: Creating software that reduces the time to create optical chips from two years to six months
On August 12, 2021, it became known about the creation of a in, Russia software which reduces the time for creating optical chips from two years to six months. We are talking about a system called, which was Difra lab developed by specialists Perm State National University with support. Competence Center of NTI "Photonics" More. here
Notes
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