According to the intelligence financial news app, Intel has made a significant breakthrough in the chip industry and launched the industry's first fully-integrated optical computing interconnect chip. This innovative technology will have a revolutionary impact on the field of artificial intelligence. At the 2024 Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC), Intel demonstrated the latest achievement of its Integrated Photonics Solution (IPS) group - an optical computing interconnect (OCI) chip set co-encapsulated with the CPU. This technology not only marks an important step forward for AI infrastructure in data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) applications, but also heralds a new era of high-bandwidth interconnect technology.

The OCI chip is designed to support 64 channels, with data transfer speeds of up to 32 gigabits per second (Gbps), and fiber lengths of up to 100 meters. It meets the needs of AI infrastructure for higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, and longer transmission distances, while supporting the scalability of future CPU/GPU clusters and new computing architectures, including consistent memory expansion and resource decomposition.

As AI-based applications gain widespread use worldwide, the latest developments in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI are accelerating this trend. Larger and more efficient machine learning (ML) models will play a key role in meeting emerging demands for accelerated AI workloads. The expansion demand of future AI computing platforms is driving exponential growth in I/O bandwidth and coverage to support larger processing unit (CPU/GPU/IPU) clusters and architectures, as well as more efficient resource utilization, such as xPU decomposition and memory pooling.

Although traditional electrical I/O (copper wire connection) supports high bandwidth density and low power consumption, its short-distance transmission limits its applications in data centers and AI clusters. In contrast, Intel's OCI chip uses the co-encapsulated xPU optical I/O solution to support higher bandwidth, while improving power efficiency, reducing latency, and increasing coverage, which is exactly what AI/ML infrastructure expansion needs.

Intel's innovation can be metaphorically described as using optical I/O instead of electrical I/O in CPU and GPU to transfer data, just as changing from using horse-drawn carriages to using cars and trucks to deliver goods can transport large amounts of goods over longer distances. This improvement in performance and energy costs is exactly what Intel's OCI chips and other optical I/O solutions have achieved for AI expansion.

As a leader in silicon photonics, Intel has made full use of over 25 years of internal research, which has pioneered Integrated Photonics. Intel is the first company to develop and deliver silicon photonics connectivity products with industry-leading reliability to major cloud service providers in bulk. Intel employs on-wafer laser hybrid technology and direct integration technology to achieve unparalleled integration, improve reliability, and reduce costs.

Intel's high-capacity platform has delivered more than 8 million PICs, with more than 32 million on-chip lasers integrated. The timely failure rate (FIT) of the lasers is less than 0.1, which is a widely used reliability metric. These PICs are packaged in pluggable transceiver modules and deployed in large data center networks of major hyperscale cloud service providers for 100, 200, and 400 Gbps applications. The next generation of 200G/channel PICs is under development to support emerging 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps applications.

Intel is also implementing a new silicon photonics manufacturing process node, which has advanced equipment performance, higher density, better coupling, and greatly improved economics. Intel has made significant progress in on-chip laser and SOA performance, cost (more than 40% reduction in chip area), and power (more than 15% reduction).

Intel executive Thomas Liljeberg said, "The ever-increasing movement of data between servers is putting pressure on the functionality of today's data center infrastructure, and current solutions are rapidly approaching the practical limits of electrical I/O performance. However, Intel's groundbreaking achievement enables customers to seamlessly integrate the co-encapsulated silicon photonics interconnect solution into the next generation of computing systems."

Currently, Intel's OCI chip set is a prototype, and the company is working with specific customers to package OCI with their SOC as an optical I/O solution. As AI infrastructure continues to develop, Intel is always at the forefront of innovation, driving technological progress and shaping the future of connectivity.