Optical interconnect company Ayar Labs announced the TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet, which Ayar said is the first optical Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), designed to maximize AI infrastructure performance and efficiency while reducing latency and power consumption. The chiplet is intended to eliminate data bottlenecks and to be integrated easily into chip designs.
Capable of 8 Tbps bandwidth, the TeraPHY chiplet is powered by Ayar Labs’ 16-wavelength SuperNova light source.
According to Ayar Labs, the integration of the UCIe standard supports interoperability among chiplets from different vendors. This compatibility standard creates a more accessible, cost-effective ecosystem, which streamlines the adoption of optical technologies necessary for scaling AI workloads and overcoming the limitations of traditional copper interconnects, the company said.
“Optical interconnects are needed to solve power density challenges in scale-up AI fabrics,” said Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. “We recognized early on the potential for CPO, which positioned us to drive adoption of optical solutions in AI applications. As we continue to push the boundaries of optical technologies, we’re also bringing together the supply chain, manufacturing, and testing and validation processes needed for customers to deploy these solutions at scale.”
The company said it has combined silicon photonics with CMOS manufacturing processes to enable the use of optical interconnects in a chiplet form factor within multi-chip packages. This allows GPUs and other accelerators to communicate across a wide range of distances, from millimeters to kilometers, while effectively functioning as a single, giant GPU.
Ayar Labs issued statements from members of the UCIe Consortium (AMD, Alphawave Semi, d-Matrix, and the UCIe Consortium), including this from GlobalFoundries:
“As the industry transitions to a chiplet-based approach to system partitioning, the UCIe interface for chiplet-to-chiplet communication is rapidly becoming a de facto standard,” said Kevin Soukup, senior vice president of GlobalFoundries’ silicon photonics product line. “We are excited to see Ayar Labs demonstrating the UCIe standard over an optical interface, a pivotal technology for scale-up networks. This accomplishment, uniquely enabled by our monolithic GF Fotonix platform, underscores the essential role of silicon photonics in driving highly energy efficient transmission of high-speed data over long distances while maintaining compatibility with chiplet-based standards.”
