Understanding In-Package Optical I/O Versus Co-Packaged Optics

By Vladimir Stojanovic, Ayar Labs

Though the two terms above are often compared, one is a replacement strategy for pluggables while the other is a chiplet-based optical interconnect solution. A closer look at both will help clarify.

Recent advancements in silicon photonics are upending the optical market in the data center, with significant ramifications for how future AI, cloud, and high-performance computing systems will be designed, architected, and deployed. The core problem involves how to best connect compute chips over longer distances while maintaining bandwidth, energy, and density metrics that are acceptable for a given application.

At the same time, there is a lot of confusion — some inadvertent, some perhaps intentionally sown — regarding the differences between interconnect technologies such as co-packaged optics (CPOs), pluggables, and in-package optical I/O. Moreover, various industry standards are in play for these optical connections: What do they portend for the future?
 

To read the full article, click here