silicon nanophotonics

IBM scientists presented a new microcircuit capable of raising processor technology to a new level and serve as the basis for next-generation high-performance computers. The chip was created using a new approach - silicon nanophotonics integrated with CMOS (CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics), which allows combining traditional silicon components with a modern optical interface on a chip of unprecedented density.

“The development of silicon nanophotonics brings to reality the concept of optical interconnections within the microcircuit,” said Dr. T. Chen (TC Chen), vice president of IBM Research for science and technology. “The ability to implement optical communications in processor chips makes us a step closer to creating energy-efficient computer systems with exaflop-level performance.”

New optical technology will allow processors to interact with other components of a computer or even another server or server rack much faster than is possible today. As a result, the delay in transferring data from one processor to another will be significantly reduced, which will provide significant performance gains and create conditions for exaflops scale calculations.

The IBM technique provides ten times the greater integration density of optical components compared to all other technologies. In addition, the mass production of processors according to new standards can be relatively easily organized on already existing capacities, without the need to install special equipment. IBM now remains only to adjust the release of microchips using the new technology in their factories.

IBM has announced that its specialists have developed a new way to transfer data between the CPU cores. The technology, called silicon nanophotonics (silicon nanophotonics), allows the use of light impulses rather than electricity for data transfer. That will allow a hundred times to increase the speed and ten times to reduce energy consumption.

The method of using light when transmitting a signal between processor cores is free from such disadvantages as excessive heat generation and short range. In the case of electricity, the distance to the attenuation of the signal is a few millimeters. And silicon nanophotonics will provide a clear signal at a distance of several centimeters.

If the implementation of the technology is successful (according to IBM, it will take from 10 to 12 years), then by 2020 we will get supercomputers that are most powerful and relatively inexpensive to maintain, which will not exceed the size of current laptops.

IBM announced a new advance in the use of light instead of electrical signals to transmit information in future computer solutions. "Silicon nanophotonics" allows you to integrate various optical components together with electrical circuits on the same silicon chip using sub-100ni semiconductor technology.

Silicon nanophotonics use light pulses to transfer large amounts of data at high speeds between computer chips, which can be effectively used in servers, large data centers and supercomputers, while avoiding network overload.

The discovery was made possible thanks to a decade of research conducted by IBM, and the real world will appreciate the results of all this quite soon.

Commercial production of silicon nanophotonics will allow the industry to continue to increase computing power and performance. Among specific areas, analytic systems and computations that generate large amounts of data will greatly benefit, as new developments will make it possible to transfer terabytes of data in an instant.

IBM technology will bring to a relatively mass market transceivers exceeding 25Gps per data channel. In the end, all this will affect ordinary people, who in five years can wait for another significant increase in connection speed.