New breakthroughs in the technology that moves data into and out of facilities are significantly increasing the efficiency and data throughput capabilities of data centers. The changes above address many of the worst problems plaguing existing systems. With the growing demands for bandwidth and performance, companies are exploring innovative solutions that bridge the gap between traditional copper cables and photonics technology. Visionary industry leaders such as Don Barnetson of Credo, David Kuo of Point2 Technology, and Dave Welch of AttoTude are pushing this evolution full steam ahead. They are making path-breaking innovations to improve data transfer rates and power consumption.
The Challenges of Current Photonics Technology
As America’s data centers get bigger and bigger, photonics technology is an important part of that infrastructure. Yet, it suffers from multiple headwinds that continue to stall its rapid adoption nationwide. Power is the other big problem. Indeed, ICT photonics makes up approximately 10 percent of a data center’s overall compute spend. This tremendous energy demand contributes to sustainability and operational cost challenges with traditional data centers, driving companies to pursue more efficient options.
A second and equally important limitation of photonics is its extreme sensitivity to temperature variations that can degrade performance and reliability by orders of magnitude. Additionally, achieving the necessary precision in manufacturing photonics chips is a complex task, requiring micrometer-level accuracy to ensure effective light transmission. This complex and labor-intensive process adds to the widely known long-term reliability challenges for this photonics technology.
As companies push for increased bandwidth capability, they face the challenge of improving photonics while addressing its inherent limitations. The challenge to find new solutions is more urgent than ever, as data centers race to keep up with growing demand.
Innovations from Credo, Point2 Technology, and AttoTude
Despite these challenges, a wave of startups has arisen with innovative designs to transmit more data in new ways. Don Barnetson from Credo has announced the development of an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) that can deliver data rates of 800 Gb/s over distances of up to seven meters. This milestone represents a major step towards greater efficiency, enabling data centers to do more with the infrastructure they already have in place.
Point2 Technology has scored plenty with its pioneering wireless approach to data transmission. As David Kuo adds, bandwidth demands on the old copper cables approaches the terabit-per-second. In order to stay ahead, the physical characteristics of these cables must continue to evolve. He points out that shorter and thicker cables will be needed to accommodate these new demands. Point2’s cables are made with eight e-Tube fibers. With each fiber capable of transmitting more than 200 gigabits per second, they are a robust long-term solution for increasing demand for bandwidth.
Point2 intends to start producing chips for a new 1.6-terabit-per-second undersea cable that fuses eight ultra-slim polymer waveguides. At each end of these cables, a silicon chip is at work efficiently converting any incoming digital data into the appropriate modulated millimeter-wave frequencies. This groundbreaking advancement is a major leap into true high speed data transfer with a focus on maintaining maximum integrity.
AttoTude’s Approach to Data Transmission
In addition to Credo and Point2 Technology, AttoTude is making waves in the industry with its unique approach to data transmission. Dave Welsh of Infinera expects his company’s fiberwaveguide technology will allow data to be transmitted over distances up to 20 miles. This new development might become extremely important in growing the footprints of data centers while still delivering that low-latency, high-speed connectivity.
Taking a meticulous approach, AttoTude has woven together different components to reach its ambitious end goals. The system includes a virtual back end that interfaces with a system of GPUs. Equipped with a novel terahertz-frequency generator and a mixer to modulate data onto the terahertz signal, it … By building on these three elements, AttoTude looks to develop a multi-faceted solution that can address the ongoing changing demands of data centers.
Both Point2 Technology and AttoTude advocate for an original technology that works in the middle ground between copper cables and photonics. Their method is totally different. This happy medium has the benefit of both technologies. It sidesteps their shortcomings, which makes it even more attractive to data center operators devoted to squeezing efficiency as well as reliability out of their operations.
The Future of Data Centers
Nvidia’s currently gunning to increase the maximum number of GPUs per system from 72 to 576 by 2027. This opens an unprecedented opportunity and urgent imperative for better ways to transmit this data. All of this expansion will add even more stresses upon our existing data center infrastructure. We need to accelerate advances in bandwidth capacity and maximize power efficiency.
With the introduction of optical transceivers, Nvidia and Broadcom have both recently met these challenges with favorable results. They combined these transceivers into the same package as their processors, taking a huge step towards lowering latency and increasing overall performance. This integration is a part of the wider industry move to data center optimized hardware, which helps to make operations much more streamlined.
Innovations from entrepreneurs like Credo, Point2 Technology, and AttoTude are changing the game in the data transmission technology space. It’s a landscape particularly in flux right now. These innovations hold enormous potential to improve both safety and efficiency. They also address very real issues that our current grid faces with respect to soaring energy costs and reliability.
