Intel unveils 'optical computing interconnect' chiplet that will transmit data 100 times farther with light
Intel has announced a demonstration of a fully integrated optical computing interconnect (OCI) that integrates optical input/output chiplets with a CPU. OCI, which realizes data transmission over much longer distances with high bandwidth and low power consumption than conventional chips that exchange data via copper wires and electricity, is said to revolutionize AI infrastructure built on large-scale CPU clusters and GPU clusters.
Intel Demonstrates First Fully Integrated Optical I/O Chiplet :: Intel Corporation (INTC)
Intel® Shows OCI Optical I/O Chiplet Co-packaged with CPU at OFC2024, Enabling Explosive AI Scaling - Intel Community
https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Artificial-Intelligence-AI/Intel-Shows-OCI-Optical-IO-Chiplet-Co-packaged-with-CPU-at/post/1582541
OCI is a technology announced by Intel's Integrated Photonics Solutions (IPS) group at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) 2024 in March 2024.
The core of this technology is a fully integrated optical input/output chiplet that is built into Intel's CPU.
Traditional electrical I/O can handle data with high bandwidth and low power consumption, but it only works over very short distances of less than one meter, limiting its scalability.
Pluggable optical transceivers solve the distance problem, but they increase power consumption and cost, making them unsuitable for compute-intensive AI workloads.
The OCI announced by Intel supports 64 lanes of 32Gbps data transmission in each direction over optical fiber up to 100 meters, meeting the demands of AI infrastructure that require high bandwidth, low power consumption, and long distance communication. This enables new AI infrastructure designs such as large-scale connections of CPU and GPU clusters.
Regarding the replacement of current hardware that electrically inputs and outputs data to and from CPUs and GPUs with optical I/O, Intel said, 'It's like replacing the delivery of goods by horse-drawn carriages, which have limited capacity and range, with cars and trucks, which can deliver much larger quantities of goods over much longer distances. It is this level of performance improvement and energy cost reduction that optical I/O solutions such as our OCI chiplets bring to AI scaling.'
To demonstrate OCI implementation, Intel has developed a fully integrated OCI chiplet capable of bidirectional data transfers of up to 4Tbps. In this demo, OCI is packaged with the CPU, but Intel says OCI can also be embedded in GPUs, IPUs of AI chips, and other SoCs.
'As server-to-server movement continues to increase, data center infrastructure is under increasing strain and current electrical I/O solutions are rapidly reaching their limits,' said Thomas Liljeberg, senior director of product management and strategy at IPS Group. 'Intel's breakthrough enables the seamless integration of photonics interconnect solutions into next-generation computing systems. Our OCI chiplets also increase bandwidth and reach while reducing power consumption, accelerating ML workloads that will revolutionize high-performance AI infrastructure.'
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