Intel® Silicon Photonics
Bringing together the performance and reliability of integrated photonics with the scalability of silicon to enable high-bandwidth, power-efficient connectivity.
What Is Silicon Photonics?
Silicon Photonics is a combination of two of the most important inventions of the 20th century—the silicon integrated circuit and the semiconductor laser. It enables faster data transfer over longer distances compared to traditional electronics, while utilizing the efficiencies of Intel’s high-volume silicon manufacturing.
Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI)
Intel® Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) is a new class of optical connectivity devices, delivering multi-terabit per second solutions with the reach and energy efficiency required to dramatically scale next-generation compute platforms and architectures, supporting the exponential growth of AI infrastructure.
Features of our OCI chiplet include:
- Fully integrated die stack, consisting of a single Intel® Silicon Photonics Integrated Circuit (PIC) with on-chip DWDM lasers and SOAs, and an advanced node CMOS electrical integrated circuit (EIC) with all the electronic devices required to form a complete optical I/O subsystem. No external laser source or optical amplification is required.
- The first-generation chiplet supports 4 Tbps bidirectionally, with a roadmap to tens of Terabits per second per device.
- Works over standard single-mode fiber (SMF-28). No polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) is required.
- A path to incorporate a detachable optical connector.
- Designed to be co-packaged with next-generation CPU, GPU, IPU, and other SOCs. Stand-alone on-board implementations can also be supported.
- Chiplet-level evaluation platforms to be available.
- Based on our field-proven Intel® Silicon Photonics platform, which has already shipped more than 8 million PICs with over 32 million on-chip lasers embedded in pluggable optical transceivers for data center networking, with industry-leading reliability.
Find more information about our recent live demonstration of an OCI chiplet co-packaged with an Intel CPU. Read the blog.
High-Speed Photonics Components
Our Intel® Silicon Photonics Components portfolio offers highly reliable, volume-proven solutions for pluggable data center connectivity. Features include:
- Differentiated PICs and Electrical ICs.
- 400Gbps, 800Gbps, and 1.6Tbps solutions with parallel (DR) and WDM (FR) interfaces.
- Low-cost structure available for 8-lane designs.
- On-die Integrated laser array technology fabricated at wafer-scale, unique to Intel® Silicon Photonics – No external laser required.
- Integrated solution enables wafer-scale test and laser burn-in for true photonics Known-Good-Die.
- Next-generation process technology for disruptive cost structure, size, and integration.
- Maturity – Our field-proven Intel® Silicon Photonics platform has already shipped more than 8 million PICs with over 32 million on-chip lasers embedded in pluggable optical transceivers for data center networking, with industry-leading reliability.
We currently offer the following 5 out of the 6 integrated circuits required in a pluggable transceiver module design:
- TX PIC
- RX PIC
- Driver IC
- Receiver IC (TIA)
- Controller (PMIC)
High Volume-proven Silicon Photonics Platform
Intel is a pioneer in Silicon Photonics, having started investing in this technology at Intel Labs over 20 years ago.
Today, the Intel Silicon Photonics Product Division is the volume market leader in Silicon Photonics, with over 8 million PICs and over 32 million on-chip integrated lasers shipped from our high-volume fabs since 2016, embedded in pluggable transceiver modules deployed by major hyperscale cloud service providers.
Our US-based high-volume Silicon Photonics platform offers proven industry-leading quality and field reliability while providing geographical diversification.
Our hybrid laser-on-wafer technology with direct coupling enables wafer-scale manufacturing and testing for higher reliability and efficiency.
To Learn More About Intel® Silicon Photonics Solutions
Contact us now
Related Materials
Intel® Silicon Photonics at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference, OFC2024
At the Optical Fiber Conference in San Diego, Intel demonstrated an advanced optical compute Interconnect (OCI) Chiplet co-packaged with a prototype of a next-generation Intel CPU running live data, giving the industry a look at the future of high-bandwidth compute interconnect.
CES 2021: Mobileye Innovation Will Bring AVs to Everyone, Everywhere
Prof. Amnon Shashua, president and CEO of Mobileye, shows off a new silicon photonics lidar SoC that will deliver frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) lidar on a chip for autonomous vehicles beginning in 2025.
VentureBeat Explores the Past, Present, and Future of Intel’s Silicon Photonics Vision
Intel sees bright future for silicon photonics, moving information at light speed in data centers and beyond.
The Future of Silicon Photonics at Scale - CitC Episode 230
Intel’s Robert Blum joins host Jake Smith to talk about Intel’s broader connectivity group. How the company facilitates efficiently moving data between servers and across the data center with a wide range of products, including silicon photonics, Ethernet switches, accelerators and more.
Optical Networking at Scale with Intel® Silicon Photonics
This presentation discusses the advancements Intel has made in Silicon Photonics since first launching 100Gb/s transceivers over 4 years ago. How manufacturing optics at scale has resulted in the deployment of more than 5 million transceivers for hyperscale data centers to date.
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Optical Connections sat down with Robert Blum and Darron Young for a deep dive into the company’s photonics strategy going forward.
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Hands-on with the Intel Co-Packaged Optics and Silicon Photonics Switch
Patrick Kennedy from ServeTheHome got to check out Intel’s live demonstration of co-packaged optics switch passing 400Gbps Ethernet traffic.
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ECOC TV Interview with Intel’s Thomas Liljeberg
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