Ranovus says CPO 2.0 delivers power and cost savings data centres
In partnership with IBM, TE Connectivity and Senko Advanced Components, Ranovus has announced the Odin Analogue Drive CPO 2.o architecture. Announced at OFC 2021, it is, says Ranovus, the next step in reducing power consumption and overall costs for hyperscale data centre operations.
Co-packaged optics, or CPO technology provides nx100Gbps PAM4 optical I/O for Ethernet switch and machine learning / artificial intelligence (ML / AI) silicon in a single packaged assembly. This “significantly reduces the cost and power consumption of the complete system” according to Ranovus.
As data centre traffic grows at an unprecedented pace, fuelled by advances in AI and ML, the networking infrastructure capacity must scale yet the infrastructure must maintain its total power consumption and footprint. In March 2020, the strategic collaboration that was announced in March 2020 between Ranovus, TE Connectivity, IBM, and Senko was CPO 1.0. CPO 2.0 improves on this while maintaining optical interoperability. It also delivers 40 per cent cost and power consumption savings by eliminating the retimer function in the Odin Analogue-Drive optical engine, which also enables a cost-effective single die solution, says Ranovus. The next generation technology has a smaller footprint and allows for the reuse and optimisation of existing 100G PAM4 and PCIe serialiser/deserialiser (serdes) chips rather than new investment in an XSR Ser/Des chip for data centre applications.
Customer trials with Odin Analog-Drive CPO 2.0 are planned in Q4 2021.
Odin leverages Ranovus’ disruptive innovation in multi-wavelength quantum dot laser (MW QDL), 100Gbits per second silicon photonics based micro ring resonator modulators and photodetectors, 100Gbits per second driver, 100Gbits per second transimpedance amplifier (TIA) and control circuitry in a power efficient and cost-effective single die electronic-photonic IC or EPIC.
IBM developed the innovative fibre V-groove interconnect packaging technology which is a robust and reliable assembly technique to interface optical fibres to silicon photonics devices. The process makes use of passive alignment techniques and achieves low insertion loss across a wide spectral range in both the O-band and C-band regimes. The solution is scalable in physical channel count and the automated process provides a path to high-volume manufacturing of co-packaged optics.
TE Connectivity’s co-packaged (CP) fine pitch socket interposer technology enables the integration of small chipset and optical engine component technologies into high-value co-package assemblies with reworkable and interoperable interfaces. The CP fine pitch socket interposer technology has signal integrity performance capability for 100Gbits per second as well as future 200Gbits per second applications. The integration of TE Connectivity’s controlled force mechanical and thermal bridge hardware completes the assembly by providing an innovative solution for thermal management of the switch, serdes and optics necessary for high reliability and long operating life.
Senko’s provides fibre optic connectivity for optical coupling, on-board/mid-board, and faceplate support for 100Gbits per second per lane and beyond CP optics equipment designs. These include low profile and precision fibre coupler assemblies, micro sized on-/mid-board connectors, reflow compatible connector assemblies, space saving connector options for faceplate, and blindmate connector solutions for backplane and external laser source modules. These will provide more efficiency, scalability, and flexibility in designs for CP optics equipment.
