Intel CPU with Optical Compute Interconnect Chiplet
Intel showed off a pretty cool piece of technology integrating an optical I/O chiplet with a CPU. The first iteration of the design is a fully integrated
CPU optical module
Intel recently developed an optical chip interconnect system and demonstrated its first fully integrated optical I/O (OCI) chiplet. This chiplet addresses one of the biggest challenges facing computer architects in the age of AI: the energy and latency cost of traditional electrical. LPO (Linear-drive Pluggable Optics), NPO (Near Package Optics), and CPO (Co-Packaged Optics) architectures are becoming core areas of industry focus. Although co-packaged optics (CPO) and on-board optics (OBO) have been proposed to increase bandwidth density, these approaches introduce significant challenges in field serviceability, scalability, and manufacturability, making them difficult to deploy widely in hyperscale environments. Intel says its new silicon photonics DWDM optical chiplet uses only 5 pJ/bit versus 15 pJ/bit for pluggable modules. Although Intel sold its Silicon Photonics pluggable business to Jabil, the company still has a SiPho team that is showing off its new optical interconnect chiplet.
