TSMC Jumps Into Silicon Photonics, Lays Out Roadmap For 12.8 Tbps COUPE On-Bundle Interconnect
Optical connectivity – and particularly silicon photonics – is anticipated to change into an important expertise to allow connectivity for next-generation datacenters, notably these designed HPC purposes. With ever-increasing bandwidth necessities wanted to maintain up with (and hold scaling out) system efficiency, copper signaling alone will not be sufficient to maintain up. To that finish, a number of firms are creating silicon photonics options, together with fab suppliers like TSMC, who this week outlined its 3D Optical Engine roadmap as a part of its 2024 North American Know-how Symposium, laying out its plan to deliver as much as 12.8 Tbps optical connectivity to TSMC-fabbed processors.
TSMC’s Compact Common Photonic Engine (COUPE) stacks an electronics built-in circuit on photonic built-in circuit (EIC-on-PIC) utilizing the corporate’s SoIC-X packaging expertise. The foundry says that utilization of its SoIC-X permits the bottom impedance on the die-to-die interface and due to this fact the best power effectivity. The EIC itself is produced at a 65nm-class course of expertise.
TSMC’s 1st Technology 3D Optical Engine (or COUPE) shall be built-in into an OSFP pluggable gadget operating at 1.6 Tbps. That is a switch price effectively forward of present copper Ethernet requirements – which prime out at 800 Gbps – underscoring the fast bandwidth benefit of optical interconnects for heavily-networked compute clusters, by no means thoughts the anticipated energy financial savings.
Wanting additional forward, the 2nd Technology of COUPE is designed to combine into CoWoS packaging as co-packaged optics with a change, permitting optical interconnections to be delivered to the motherboard stage. This model COUPE will help knowledge switch charges of as much as 6.40 Tbps with decreased latency in comparison with the primary model.
TSMC’s third iteration of COUPE – COUPE operating on a CoWoS interposer – is projected to enhance on issues one step additional, growing switch charges to 12.8 Tbps whereas bringing optical connectivity even nearer to the processor itself. At current, COUPE-on-CoWoS is within the pathfinding stage of improvement and TSMC doesn’t have a goal date set.
Finally, in contrast to lots of its trade friends, TSMC has not participated within the silicon photonics market up till now, leaving this to gamers like GlobalFoundries. However with its 3D Optical Engine Technique, the corporate will enter this vital market because it seems to make up for misplaced time.
