Intel Lights Up Silicon, Shipping Silicon Photonics Transceivers

Status
Not open for further replies.

Adr2t

Commendable
Aug 21, 2016
3
0
1,510
Wont happen unless it's to cross talk with another core on the other side of the CPU or MB. Other wise, electrons move just as fast as light over wire with in a short distant. Photonic also require that you convert electrons to photons and then back to electrons. This process takes a long time compare to just sending a electron down a wire.
 

Ksec

Commendable
Aug 21, 2016
6
1
1,510
I think people are missing the point. It is about using less PCI-E link to achieve the same bandwidth, and therefore saves cost on the Die Size space. I/O interface dont shrink as much as other parts of the CPU. So instead of PCI-E 3.0 4x for an SSD, now 2x will do. There is also a lot of power efficiency, focusing on Mobile usage.
 

bit_user

Polypheme
Ambassador
Most data centers are beginning the transition to 10 GbE for communication between servers
You mean 100 GbE?

Eventually--some claim within the next five years--photonics will work their way down to the die level, which could usher in the next wave of high-performance computing.
Later this year, Intel is slated to ship a version of the Knights Landing Xeon Phi with integrated OmniPath (in-package, but not on-die) @ 25 GB/sec/port (bi-dir) with 2 ports.

Unfortunately, each port is connected via a PCIe 3.0 x16 link. So, this version of the chip will have only 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes reaching the motherboard.
 

gondor

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
80
14
18,635
"Silicon photonics will eventually filter down to handle traffic between and inside of servers. It may eventually boost data transfer speeds between microchips before it eventually works its way into the CPUs."

Eventually.
 

ammaross

Distinguished
Jan 12, 2011
269
0
18,790


They won't. Transistors are different than what they're referring to in this article. The better equivalent would be the traces that run from the CPU cores to the L1/L2/L3 cache or from the CPU to RAM, etc.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.