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Intel® Silicon Photonics

Moving data with light

A new class of high-speed optical connectivity products.

What Is Silicon Photonics?

Silicon Photonics is a combination of two of the most important inventions of the 20th century—the silicon integrated circuit and the semiconductor laser. It enables faster data transfer over longer distances compared to traditional electronics, while utilizing the efficiencies of Intel’s high-volume silicon manufacturing.

Intel Is Driving Evolution of the Data Center

Intel has always been at the forefront of this exciting new technology, announcing the world’s first hybrid silicon laser nearly a decade ago. But what truly makes our role in silicon photonics unique is not only our efficient, high-volume silicon manufacturing, but our dedication to furthering research in this field. Investing in silicon photonics enables future data center bandwidth to grow, driving evolution of form factors, speed (100G today, 400G tomorrow), and optical integration platforms.

Removing Networking Bottlenecks

This new technology reduces total cost of ownership and improves the performance of data center architectures by removing networking bottlenecks that can result in stranded compute capacity. Silicon Photonics helps by:

  • Enabling high-bandwidth, software-configurable access to compute and storage
  • Permitting software defined infrastructure (SDI) deployments to decouple hardware and software resources for disaggregated data centers.

Delivering 100G Connectivity

Intel® Silicon Photonics optical transceivers are shipping in volume now, enabling data centers to cost-effectively deploy 100 Gigabit per second solutions via:

  • The only fully integrated silicon photonics solution with Intel's hybrid laser technology, featuring greater than 90% coupling efficiency.1 2
  • Industry-standard products adopted by cloud service providers.
  • High-density optical interconnects delivered with unmatched manufacturing capabilities, scale, and cost-efficiency.

Intel® Silicon Photonics Products

100G PSM4 QSFP28 Optical Transceiver

Features up to 2km reach on parallel single-mode fiber, and is designed to be compliant with 100G PSM4 MSA, QSFP28, and CAUI-4 specifications.

Read the product brief

100G CWDM4 QSFP28 Optical Transceiver

Features up to 2km reach on duplex single-mode fiber, with high speed and low-power consumption. Designed to be compliant with 100G CWDM4 and CLR4 MSA, QSFP28, and CAUI-4 specifications.3

Read the product brief

Related Materials

OFC 2016 COBO Presentation

This presentation delivered by Intel at the 2016 Optical Networking and Communication Conference highlights the role of Intel® Silicon Photonics in the data center of the future, and the role of the Consortium for On-Board Optics in moving from 100G to integrated optics.

View the presentation

451 Research Analyst Paper*

This third-party analyst report by 451 Research discusses the importance of silicon photonics technology, including Intel® Silicon Photonics, and its potential impact on networking and rack scale design, as well as the evolution of the data center with light.

Read the report

Light Reading Interview with Intel's Alexis Black Bjorlin

In this CEO Chat interview, Steve Saunders of Light Reading and Alexis Black Bjorlin of Intel discuss the production release of Intel® Silicon Photonics, its performance, long-term prospects, customer expectations and much more.

Watch the interview

Intel Delivers Silicon Photonics for Hyperscale Data Centers

Intel Chip Chat strives to bring listeners closer to the innovations and inspirations of the men and women shaping the future of computing, and in process share a little bit about technology themselves.

Listen to the Podcast

Intel’s Robert Blum talks Silicon Photonics at ECOC

As we enter the third wave of compute, there’s a huge demand for data centers to be able to handle more traffic. Listen to Robert Blum discuss how Intel’s Silicon Photonics provide an impressive solution at the 2016 ECOC Exhibition.

Watch the interview

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Learn More about Silicon Photonics


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Product and Performance Information

1

Based on simulations and Intel manufacturing data. See IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, vol. 20, No. 4, July/August 2014.

2

Based on Intel assessment of commercially available products.

3

For use only by product developers, software developers, and system integrators. For evaluation only; not FCC approved for resale.

4

Technology claims are based on comparisons of latency, density and write cycling metrics amongst memory technologies recorded on published specifications of in-market memory products against internal Intel specifications.

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