Through the rapid transformation of technology enabling artificial intelligence, Nvidia is way out in front on that. Most notably, they have publicly committed to increase their systems’ capacity radically by increasing from eight to 64 their systems’ number of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). By 2027, Nvidia plans to increase the max number of GPUs from 72 to 576. This ambitious expansion is fueled by the increasing global demand for processing and transmitting data at breakneck speeds. Data centers throughout our industry are rising to meet this demand.
Advanced Electrical Connections (AECs) are changing the way GPUs connect to network switches. These simple but powerful switches are the secret sauce behind scale-out networks. On the surface, this new technology seems to drive the continued transformational data transfer and processing capabilities into data centers.
Innovations in Optical Transceivers
All of a sudden, thanks to Nvidia and Broadcom, optical communications have taken a big leap forward with deployments of transceivers co-packaged with processors. This pioneering approach enables greater efficiency and performance while reducing footprint within data center hardware.
Well known industry leader David Welch has made an intriguing forecast. He imagines this new waveguide technology will allow data transmission on the order of 12 to 20 meters. These developments will improve the speed and consistency of connections between GPUs and network infrastructure, ejecting increased performance throughout the entire system.
“Customers love fiber. But what they hate is the photonics.” – Dave Welch
Richardson Engineers at Point2 have teamed with road safety specialists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. They have been leading the charge for these advancements with 28-nm CMOS technology. By joining together in this partnership, we hope to leverage what’s best of each technology while overcoming the challenges and limitations that each face.
Welch details the pain points of meshing these two systems. To that end, two of the biggest players in AI, Nvidia and Broadcom, both invested a large amount of engineering resources to make sure their systems are manufacturable and reliable enough that they could be packaged alongside a processor.
The Role of Point2’s e-Tube Technology
To tackle this challenge, Point2 recently released a cool new tool called the e-Tube. It’s especially intended to increase data transfer speeds in today’s advanced, next-generation data centers. Each e-Tube cable contains eight fibers, each fiber able to transmit more than 200 gigabits of data every second. This advanced design offers a total capacity of 1.6 terabits per second while occupying half the area of a traditional 32-gauge copper cable.
Additionally, the e-Tube technology has up to 20 times the range versus typical copper cables. Along those lines, David Kuo notes the single biggest benefit of operating at RF wavelengths— run-of-the-mill silicon foundries can make the necessary chips. This strategy greatly reduces the costs of production.
“Electronics have been demonstrated to be inherently more reliable than optics.” – Dave Welch
The e-Tube’s aesthetic engineering features just one silicon chip on one end. These chips transform incoming digital data streams into modulated millimeter-wave frequencies. An antenna then launches this information into the waveguide, allowing for more effective data transmission across long-distance areas.
Future Prospects and Industry Implications
The need for speedier, more efficient data processing is through the roof. Innovations from companies such as Nvidia, Point2 and Broadcom will be critical to fill this expanding demand. Specifically, they meet increasingly high demand for high-speed interconnects across data centers and are more power- and cost-efficient.
Don Barnetson, senior vice president and head of product at Credo, highlights his company’s impressive AEC technology. It transmits at a mind-boggling 800 gigabits per second over a distance of 7 meters! These developments are a reflection not just of good R&D, but a direction of networking that embraces the best of both electrical and optical worlds.
“You start with passive copper, and you do everything you can to run in passive copper as long as you can.” – Don Barnetson