Point2 Technology is a young and exciting startup from trio of industry veterans from Marvell, Nvidia and Samsung. Their disruptive cable technology is leading to significant inroads in the data center market. Established nine years ago, the company has successfully secured $55 million in venture funding, with significant investment from Molex, a leader in computer cables and connections. That support is critical. Point2 Technology’s goal is to carve out their own specialty in the tightly contested market for data transmission solutions.
Point2 Technology just dropped a revolutionary bomb on the industry with its e-Tube cables. These hybrid copper photonics cables provide a true bridge technology between full copper and full photonics. Each cable is made up of eight e-Tube fibers. These fibers allow each individual one to carry more than 200 gigabits of data per second. Point2 Technology is well positioned to meet the growing need for high-speed, high-efficiency data transfer in data centers. Their cutting-edge capabilities will address this urgent need.
Cutting-Edge Cable Design
Point2 Technology’s e-Tube cables provide an impressive performance to feature ratio. These cables use just a third of the power that the optical cables need. Their construction is one-third the cost and latency can be one-thousandth of conventional alternatives. These improvements combine to make this performance super efficient. Among other benefits, it reduces operational expenses for data centers that are increasingly facing the complexities of surging data traffic.
3) The design of these cables is kind of impressive. The new e-Tube cable takes up half the space of a 32-gauge copper cable while reaching up to 20 times the distance. This small footprint makes it especially attractive for space-limited applications.
“Customers love fiber. What they hate is the photonics,” said David Welch, highlighting a common frustration within the industry regarding the limitations and complications associated with photonic technology.
Point2 Technology is ramping up to manufacture chips for a new 1.6 terabit per second cable using eight thin, flexible polymer waveguides. Each waveguide is capable of transmission at 448 gigabits per second using two separate frequencies of 90 GHz and 225 GHz. This development holds great potential to increase data transmission rates to new, unimaginable heights.
Advantages Over Optical Technology
The benefits of Point2 Technology’s solution go far beyond speed and cost. According to the company, its technology can eliminate roughly 80 percent of cooling needs in data centers, among other applications. This is incredibly important, particularly as energy costs to operate cooling systems increase. Don Barnetson remarked, “The entire reason people have gone to [liquid cooling] is to keep [scaling up] in passive copper.”
Point2 Technology’s patented tactical optical networking approach could provide a much easier path to scaling up without the difficulties that come with adding more optical capacity. The e-Tube utilizes a single silicon chip that converts incoming digital data into modulated millimeter-wave frequencies, with an antenna radiating into the waveguide. This pioneering design may account for the largest optical technology-to-optical technology performance edge once embedded inside transceiver-processor packages.
“Electronics have been demonstrated to be inherently more reliable than optics,” David Welch noted, emphasizing the potential reliability benefits of their technology.
Industry Implications and Future Prospects
As Point2 Technology moves forward, it stands at the intersection of two dominant technologies: copper and photonics. This innovative solution combines the two forms of art. It provides data centers a solid replacement option that fixes current failings.
Molex’s support is crucial for Point2 Technology’s hopes to make inroads into the vast cable-and-connector landscape. Molex’s established presence in the industry will likely facilitate greater market penetration for Point2’s innovations. “You start with passive copper, and you do everything you can to run in passive copper as long as you can,” Barnetson stated, outlining the industry’s historical preference for copper solutions.
Point2 Technology showcased 4-meter room temperature transmission at 970 GHz recently at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference. This incredible accomplishment is a testament to their steadfast determination to advance the frontier of high-frequency data transmission. This demonstration is a big step towards practical applications of its technology in real-world scenarios.