Nanowerk June 29, 2023
Using light to send information between compute nodes can dramatically increase the available bandwidth while simultaneously decreasing energy consumption. Through wavelength-division multiplexing with chip-based microresonator Kerr frequency combs, independent information channels can be encoded onto many distinct colours of light in the same optical fibre for massively parallel data transmission with low energy. Although previous high-bandwidth demonstrations have relied on benchtop equipment for filtering and modulating Kerr comb wavelength channels, data-centre interconnects require a compact on-chip form factor for these operations. Researchers at Columbia University have demonstrated a massively scalable chip-based silicon photonic data link using a Kerr comb source enabled by a new link architecture and experimentally shown aggregate single-fibre data transmission of 512 Gb s−1 across 32 independent wavelength channels. The demonstrated architecture is fundamentally scalable to hundreds of wavelength channels, enabling massively parallel terabit-scale optical interconnects for future green hyperscale data centres… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Artistic vision of a disaggregated data centre based on Kerr frequency comb-driven silicon photonic links. Credit: Nature Photonics, 29 June 1923