The Technology Development Direction of Data Center

Optical Transceivers

With the commercial use of cloud computing, big data and other new technologies, data center
flow and bandwidth have an index incensement. According to the LightCounting forecast, by
2019, the sales volume of data center optical transceivers will be over $50 million and the market
scale is hopeful to reach $4.9 billion, which will be a huge opportunity for optical transceiver
vendors. At the same time, we can see that there are some difference in applications of optical
transceivers between data center and Telecom. In the post, we will discuss the technology
development direction of data center optical transceivers in detail.

In the current market, the requirements for optical transceivers can be summarized to 6 parts:
low cost, low power consumption, high speed, high density, short period and narrow
temperature.

Low cost: It’s the foundation for data centers to use a large number of optical transceivers and
the power of facilitating the data center development;

Low power consumption: It complies with the concept of human green development and
promotes industrial development under the premise of protecting the environment;

High speed: It meets the requirement of data communication such as cloud computing and big
data;

High density: It increases the number of optical transmission channels in unit space and achieve
the purpose of improving data transmission capacity;

Short period: It’s the characteristics of the rapid development of recent data communications;
the general life cycle is 3-5 years;

Narrow temperature: The application of the data center optical transceivers is the indoor
temperature and humidity control; hence the user proposed working temperature can be defined
as 15 to 55 degrees between the narrow temperature range. This is a reasonable approach.

On the macro level, the data center optical transceiver market is a market that reasonably
defines the life and working conditions of optical transceivers according to the actual
requirements, and fully optimizes the market for the cost performance of optical modules. Due to
the open trend of several networks, this market has the characteristics of positivity and open,
welcoming the characteristics of new technologies and the atmosphere of exploring new
standards as well as application conditions. All of these provide excellent conditions for the
development of data center optical transceiver technology. Here we are trying to enumerate the
development direction of some data center optical transceiver technology for your reference.
Non-hermetic Package

As the cost of optical components (OSA) accounts for over 60% of the cost of optical transceivers,
and the space for cost reduction of optical chips becomes smaller and smaller, the most likely
cost reduction is the packaging cost. While ensuring the performance and reliability of optical
transceivers, it is necessary to promote the packaging technology from the expensive hermetic
package to the low-cost non-hermetic package. The key points of the non-hermetic package
include the non-air tightness of the optical device itself, the optimization of the design of the
optical components, the packaging materials and the improvement of the process. Among them,
optical devices, especially lasers, are the most challenging. This is because if the laser device is
not hermetic, expensive hermetic package is not needed. Fortunately, in recent years several
laser manufacturers have avowed that their lasers can be applied to non-airtight applications. In
view of the large number of shipping data center optical transceivers, most of them are mainly
non-hermetic package. It seems that the non-hermetic packaging technology has been well
received by the data center optical transceiver industry and customers.

Hybrid and Integrated Technology

Under the drive of multi-channel, high speed and low power consumption demand, the same
volume optical transceivers need to have more data transmission, and the photonic integration
technology gradually becomes a reality. Photonic integration technology has a broader meaning:
for example, based on the integration of silicon-based (planar optical waveguide hybrid
integration, silicon photonics, etc.), based on the integration of indium phosphide. The hybrid
and integrated technology usually refers to the integration of different materials. There are also
the construction of partially free space optics and partially integrated optics called hybrid
integration. The typical hybrid integrated active optical devices (laser, detector, etc.) are
integrated into the passive optical path connection or some other function (points or wave, etc.)
of the substrate (planar optical waveguide and silicon light, etc.). Hybrid integrated technology of
optical components can be done very compactly, complying with the trend of miniaturization of
optical transceivers, easy to use mature IC encapsulation process automation. It is beneficial to
mass production, which is an effective technical method for recent data center optical
transceivers.

Flip Chip Technology

Flip chip is a high-density chip interconnection technology from IC packaging industry. In the
rapid development of optical transceivers today, the interconnection between short - shrinking
chips is a valid option. It is better to weld optical chip directly onto the substrate through
gold-gold welding or eutectic welding, which is much better than the high frequency effect of
gold wire bonding (short distance, small resistance, etc.). In addition to the laser, the heat
generated by the laser is easily transferred from the solder to the substrate due to the proximity
of the source area to the solder, which is helpful for improving the efficiency of the laser at high
temperature. Because the backward welding is the mature technology of IC packaging industry,
there are many kinds of commercial automatic reverse welding machines used in IC packaging.
Optical components require optical path coupling, so the accuracy requirements are high. These
years optical components processing with high precision inversion welding machine are very
eye-catching and in many cases have realized the passive light, greatly improving the productivity.
Due to the characteristics of high precision, high efficiency and high quality, the flip chip
technology has become an important technology in the data center optical module industry.

Chip On Board Technology

COB (chip on board) technology also comes from the IC packaging industry, whose principle is
through the rubber patch technology (epoxy die bonding) to fix chips or optical components on
the PCB, and then gold wire bonding (wire bonding) uses electrical connection, and lastly drip
glue sealing on the top. Obviously, this is a non-hermetic package. The advantage of this process
is that it can be automated. For example, the optical components can be viewed as a "chip" after
it has been integrated by back loading and welding. Then the COB technology is used to fix it on
the PCB. At present, COB technology has been widely adopted, especially in the use of VCSEL
arrays in short distance data communication. The integrated silicon photonics can also be
packaged by using COB technology.

Silicon Photonics Technology

The silicon photonics is a technology that discusses the technology and technique of
optoelectronic devices and silicon-based integrated circuits, and a science integrated into on the
same silicon substrate. Silicon photonics technology will eventually go to photoelectric
integration (OEIC: Opto - Electric Integrated Circuits), making the current separated photoelectric
conversion (optical transceivers) into local photoelectric conversion of photoelectric integration,
further pushing the system integration. Silicon photonic technology can certainly do a lot of
things, but for now it's the silicon modulator. From the industry, the threshold of a new
technology into the market must be the performance and cost is competitive and the need for
huge upfront costs of silicon photonics technology is really a big challenge. The data center
optical transceiver market, due to the large demand concentration within 2 kilometers, with the
strong requirements of low cost, high speed and high density, is suitable for a large number of
applications of silicon photonics.

In my opinion, the traditional 100G optical transceivers have been very successful, and they are
not easy to get a lot of silicon photons. However, at the rate of 200G or 400G, since the
traditional direct modulation type is close to the limit of bandwidth, the cost of EML is relatively
high, which will be a good opportunity for the silicon photonics. The large number of applications
of silicon photons also depends on the openness and acceptance of technology in the industry. If
taking into account the characteristics of silicon photonics when setting the standards and
agreements or relaxing some indicators (wavelength, extinction ratio, etc.) on the premise of
meeting the transmission condition, they will greatly promote the development and application
of silicon photonics.
On Board Optics

If OEIC is the ultimate photoelectric integration scheme, on board optics is a technology between
OEIC and optical transceivers. On board optics moves the photoelectric conversion function from
the panel to the motherboard processor or to the associated electrical chip. By saving space and
increasing the density, it also reduces the distance of the high frequency signal, thus reducing the
power consumption. On board optics is primarily focused on the short-range multimode fiber
used in the VCSEL array, but recently there is a scheme for using silicon photonic technology in
single-mode fiber. In addition to the composition of the simple photoelectric conversion function,
there are also the forms (co-package) that encapsulate the photoelectric conversion function (I/O)
and the associated electrical chip (processing). Although on board optics has the advantages of
high density, the manufacturing, installation and maintenance costs are relatively high, and are
currently used in the field of supercomputing. It is believed that with the development of
technology and the need of the market, on board optics will gradually enter into the field of
optical interconnection of data center.