News: Optoelectronics
10 March 2020
Ranovus launches single-chip Odin silicon photonic engine to support ML/AI workloads for data center and 5G mobility
Ranovus Inc of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (a provider of multi-terabit interconnect solutions for data-center and communications networks) has launched its Odin platform, which scales the firm’s 100Gbps-per-lambda silicon photonics engine from 800Gbps to 3.2Tbps in a single chip supporting both module and co-packaged optics solutions.
The Odin platform incorporates a multi-wavelength quantum dot laser (QDL), 100Gbps silicon photonics-based micro-ring resonator modulators and photodetectors, 100Gbps driver, 100Gbps transimpedance amplifier (TIA) and control integrated circuits supported by a tier-1 packaging ecosystem.
“ML/AI [machine learning/artificial intelligence] are the driving forces behind innovation in our society. They have created new compute, storage and networking paradigms inside and outside the data center,” says chairman & CEO Hamid Arabzadeh. “The massive growth in data traffic fueling the algorithms requires scalable and power-efficient networking technologies. Odin platform delivers 50% power consumption/Gbps reduction and 75% cost/Gbps reduction over today’s solutions,” he adds. “Odin 8 marks the beginning of the road to multi-terabit co-packaged optics for compute, storage and networking solutions.”
Highlights of Ranovus’ Odin 8 silicon photonics engine are:
- the lowest power consumption/Gbps and cost/Gbps solution in the industry, it is claimed;
- supports for ML/AI applications with 0.4ns low latency and a protocol agnostic engine;
- support for a transmission distance of 10m to 2km in CWDM and DWDM applications;
- eight optical channels of 100Gbps/64Gbps/50Gbps PAM4 or 50Gbps/32Gbps/25Gbps NRZ;
- support for DR & FR configurations;
- support for QSFP-DD and OSFP module form factors;
- support for 25.6Tbps and 51.2Tbps Ethernet Switch configurations.
“Intra-data-center traffic is growing at a rate that outpaces anything seen outside of the data centers and is expected to triple in the next five years. This growth in traffic is driving global energy consumption, for power and cooling, that is simply not sustainable at the current trajectory,” says John Martinho, senior VP R&D. “At Ranovus, we’re dedicated to developing energy- and space-efficient technologies to address this critically important challenge - starting with our Odin optical engine platform,” he adds. “We’re proud to have brought together a tier-1 ecosystem of partners and industry veterans to make these innovations possible.”
