Point2 Technology is a Point-to-Point Communications startup, founded by industry veterans from Marvell, Nvidia, and Samsung. They’re prepared to transform data center efficiencies with their disruptive new cable technology. Established nine years ago, the company has successfully secured $55 million in venture funding, with significant contributions from leading computer cables and connections maker Molex. This funding enables Point2 Technology to pursue our revolutionary solution to a $400 billion problem. It merges two well-established technologies but offers an innovative new twist.
The company’s approach is well-timed to meet the exploding bandwidth needs of data centers. Here’s how Point2 Technology’s system works American-made technology that consumes one-third the power of standard optical systems. It’s proven to do so at much lower cost. In addition, the platform delivers an unprecedented latency breakthrough, transcending the performance thresholds of as little as one-thousandth of what today’s technologies deliver. With these game-changing capabilities Point2 Technology was able to raise the bar for data processing and transmission.
Technical Innovations and Manufacturing Plans
Point2 Technology plans to begin manufacturing chips that will support a 1.6-terabit-per-second cable, which is constructed using eight slender polymer waveguides. Each of these waveguides contains eight e-Tube fibers. This simple design choice enables them to transmit over 200 gigabits of data per second. This design represents a dramatic departure from the conventional use of copper cables. Copper has failed to keep pace with today’s impossible to satisfy bandwidth requirements.
Our e-Tube technology is built around a single silicon chip that takes incoming digital data and converts it to modulated millimeter-wave frequencies. This conversion process greatly improves the efficiency of data transmission. Most impressively, the e-Tube is crafted with a built-in antenna that radiates into the waveguide, enabling easy communication between devices.
Point2 Technology’s second-generation cable includes fibers as small as 200 micrometers in diameter. This small design shrinks the volume to one half of comparable Active Electrical Cables (AECs). This newfound reduction in scale leads not only to efficiency in physical space but to performance metrics.
Advantages Over Traditional Technologies
The developments introduced by the Point2 Technology go further than just power usage and being more cost-effective. The company’s proprietary system minimizes losses to only 0.3 decibels per meter. This performance marks a step change from the widespread high losses associated with copper cables supporting 224 gigabits per second. This decrease in signal loss improves the reliability and consistency of data transmission considerably.
David Kuo of Point2 Technology touches on learning to respond to increasing bandwidth needs. As needs scale toward the terabit-per-second range, he says, “physics requires that they get shorter and thicker.” This fresh perspective sheds light on Entergy’s desperate need for creative solutions. Point2 Technology delivers just what you need to thrive in today’s fast-changing world of data collection and utilization.
Point2 Technology’s tech could offer a dramatic competitive advantage against optical systems, particularly inside transceiver-processor packages. In this context, Kuo highlights the potential advantages of their approach: “Customers love fiber. What they hate is the photonics.” Yet this sentiment exemplifies a larger industry trend, where reliability and efficiency come before analogue optical solutions.
Future Applications and Market Impact
Looking ahead, Point2 Technology plans to deploy its first Active Electrical Cables (AECs) to connect individual Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to network switches that constitute scale-out networks. This application is only the first step though, as there lies great transformative potential in using the data centers making a world impact.
At the same time, demand for bandwidth is exploding. Businesses such as Point2 Technology are at the forefront of research and development for solutions that cater to these needs, while ensuring high performance and reliability. Dave Welch’s commentary on the balancing act within the industry captures this perfectly: “You start with passive copper, and you do everything you can to run in passive copper as long as you can.”
He illustrates why nothing is more important than reliability in electronic systems. He explains, “Electronics have been proven to be fundamentally more reliable than optics. Point2 Technology leverages these multiple insights to make sure they’re building products that address today’s pressing challenges. We’re just as primed to face tomorrow’s demands on data center operations.