Optical Connectivity At 224 Gbps

By Mike Klempa, Alphawave Semi

AI is generating so much traffic that traditional copper-based approaches for moving data inside a chip, between chips, and between systems, are running out of steam. Just adding more channels is no longer viable. It requires more power to drive signals, and the distance those signals can travel without excessive loss is shrinking. Mike Klempa, product marketing specialist at Alphawave Semi, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the impact of linear pluggable optics (LPOs) and linear retimed optics (LROs), which increase the reach of signals with significantly less power, but at the price of higher complexity.