OIF has offered a few additional details about the Energy Efficient Interfaces (EEI) Framework effort it announced previously (see “OIF starts four projects at most recent meeting, including linear/direct drive optics”). The effort looks to drive consensus on a variety of lower-power interface approaches, including those commonly referred to as linear-drive or direct-drive optics.
The linear/direct-drive – and related analog-drive approaches – seek to lower the power of high-speed optical connections by obviating the need for the DSP current architectures require. As an example, the link could be architected so that a specially designed switch ASIC would provide the DSP function while linear laser drivers and TIAs provide the necessary compensation required for the electro-optic conversion. Several companies at OFC 2023 in March displayed such technology, both as part of transceiver architectures (see, for example, “Eoptolink unveils 800G linear-drive pluggable optical transceivers” and “MACOM, Broadcom to demo 100G per lane linear drive transmission at OFC 2023”) as well as optical engines (see “Ranovus unveils single-chip Odin Analog-Drive CPO 2.0 Optical Engine for co-packaged optics” and "Startup Nubis Communications announces XT1600 optical interconnect engine as first product").
The OIF will focus on links with less than fully retimed interfaces that would support such an approach. The effort will attempt to identify critical applications and their requirements for next-generation electrical and optical links, including die-to-die, co-packaged, near-packaged, and pluggable optics. OIF members hope to identify the critical issues associated with such links and identify opportunities to pursue interoperability standards. OIF will publish the results of such studies in a Framework Document that will take the form of a technical white paper.
“With an increasing industry-wide demand, particularly from data center operators, the focus on energy efficiency is more important than ever,” said Rob Stone of Meta Platforms who is an OIF board member. “Addressing this need head-on, the new OIF framework will explore energy-efficient interfaces for the optical interconnects of next-generation data centers that will support the performance scaling of current internet applications and enable groundbreaking AI-driven applications and immersive experiences.”
“A primary goal of this project is to identify new opportunities for interoperability standards, laying the groundwork for potential future collaborations at OIF or other standards organizations,” added Jeff Hutchins, OIF board member, Physical & Link Layer (PLL) Working Group Co-Packaging vice chair, and CTO office, director at Ranovus.
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