WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF OPTICAL COMPUTING

Optical technology for energy efficient I/O in high performance computing

Presented By
ANOOP A ROLL NO:03 S7 IT

What is the Optical Computing Buzz About?

Consider Email
Electronic To Photonic Converter .txt format Fiber optic cables

Optical Computers perform computations, operate,

store and transmit data using only light.

 Miniaturisation can lead to cross talk Speed of electrons in matter Solid medium limits both speed and magnitude
Build up to heat 30 cm length of wire produces ~ 1 ns delay

Whats wrong with electronics?

Limited pin numbers Low bandwidth interconnections

Whats right with Optical?

Light doesnt suffer from the electronic time response No need for insulators Optical communication:
Multiplexing and different wavelengths with no interference Low signal loss, large bandwidth. Compact, lightweight, inexpensive No need for capacitor charging

 Computing with Light not Electricity Can be:

Optical components Entire optical computers Optical/electronic hybrids

What is Optical Computing ?

Huge multidisciplinary research area

Maths, Physics, Materials Science, Computer Science, Electronic engineering etc.

Why Do We Need Optical Computers?

Rapid growth of the Internet Network speeds currently limited by electronic circuits Terabit speeds are possible Traditional silicon circuits have a physical limit

Silicon Machines

versus Optical Computers

High-speed electrical link block diagram showing serializer, TX PLL, TX FIR, RX CTLE,RX DFE,CDR&deserializer

How Does It Work?

Photonic circuits Organic compounds No short-circuiting No heat dissipation Speed of light in photonic circuits will be close to speed of light in vacuum Light beams can travel in parallel
They can transfer data in parallel.

Optical I/O Implementation Using Hybrid MCM package

Integrates CMOS & discrete optical components Include - multichannel optical transceiver chip -850nm 10Gb/s GaAs VCSEL 1 12 LA(or n 12 array) -PIN photodiode 1 12 LA(or n 12 array) CMOS drivers & receivers are electrically coupled to VCSEL & photodiode Waveguide couple optical signal from VCSEL & photodetector to MT fiber optic connectors

Transceiver Chip Architecture

o o Include Serializer &deserializer Clock generation & clock recovery Transmitter clock is generated with PLL Receiver clock is generated with CDR Equalization complexity is reduced New circuits required for electrical-optical-electrical conversion New package technologies required to integrate optical & electrical components

Package Architecture
Integration of optical components with standard microprocessor flip-chip OLGA package technology Package substrate is a stack of laminated copper layers separated by a dielectric. 12-channel polymer waveguide & MT optical connector on one end of the waveguide array to couple light in and out of the package Array of 45 mirrors on the other end of the waveguide bend the optical signal 90 in order to capture Optical signal is transmitted by an oxide confined 850nm 10Gb/s VCSEL array optical loss budget reduced to 6.8 dB.

a) A fully assembled optical transceiver unit; b) a schematic side view of the same unit, showing the optical coupling scheme of VCSELs/photo-detectors to waveguides through a 45 mirror

VCSEL Driver And Transimpidance Amplifier

Beyond the data rate 10Gb/s VCSELs are bandwidth-limited VCSEL driver generates dual-edge pre-emphasis Average currents provided to the VCSELs range from 6 to 10 mA, which corresponds to an average optical power of 1.5 to 2 mW TIA converts the single-ended input current to a differential output voltage to reduce supply noise and provides a data rate above 12.5 Gb/s when total i/p parasitic capacitance Cp < 250 fF Bandwidth has strong dependence on input parasitic capacitance

PHOTONIC CMOS OPTICAL I/O

ARCHITECTURE
integrates modulators, waveguides, and detectors Light from a CW source is coupled onto the die and modulated using integrated waveguide-based modulators Modulated light is coupled off the die through a fiber or waveguide to a receiving chip & then into photodetector photodetector output current is converted to a full-swing electrical signal by a TIA and LA Parasitic capacitance is reduced Reduction in cost & power consumption Additional process steps required for photonics must not degrade or interfere with the front-end CMOS transistor performance

Photonics optical interconnect design

FABRICATION
photonic elements are added to the CMOS process waveguides are formed with a 450nm silicon nitride layer deposited on the SiO2 Photodetector regions are filled with polycrystalline Ge

a) Schematic of top view of full on-die optical link showing bus waveguide connecting modulator to photo detector; b) cross section SEM image (along the dotted line in a) showing optical components in one piece of silicon

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

I. Waveguide
processed as a 450 nm silicon nitride film deposited on a 2 m silicon dioxide silicon nitride waveguide loss is ~1 dB/cm

2.Modulator

Modulator and photodetector share the waveguide fabrication process

3.Photodetector
Fabrication of a photodiode from polycrystalline Ge To improve the noise performance, band gap engineering can be used to create a Schottky barrier at the metal/Ge contact in order to reduce the dark current further step toward BE compatibility is lowering the process temperature

OPTICAL LINK MODELING AND COMPARISONS

power efficiency is a function of the received optical power, which is determined by the transmit power and the link optical loss budget hybrid optical link budget is 6.8 dB integrated optical link budget is nearly 9dB worse than the hybrid optical link budget due to the coupling loss integrated photodetectors ultra-low capacitance allows the integrated optical receiver to achieve approximately 13 dB of sensitivity improvement The hybrid optical architecture is equal to or better in power efficiency than both the electrical backplane channel

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
larger numbers of CPU cores will be integrated on the microprocessor chip to provide higher bandwidth between cores on chip, and between these cores and the off-chip DRAM WDM links transmit multiple wavelengths through the same waveguide in order to increase the aggregate optical data transmission modulator &filter reduces the need of multiplexers & demultiplexers modulator has narrow tuning range BW is scaled by adding more wavelengths to each waveguide channel

Conclusion
comparison of electrical i/o and optical i/o

Thanks for Listening ...