When Light Meets Bytes: Intel Launches Crucial Optical Technology That Will Boost AI Performance — OCI Chipset Can Hit 4 Tbps and Consume Nearly 70% Less Power Than Competitors

Intel unveiled the industry’s first fully integrated bi-directional optical I/O chipset at the recent Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) Conference 2024.

This Optical Computing Interconnect (OCI), presented by Intel’s Integrated Photonics Solutions group, supports 64 channels of data transmission at 32 Gbit/s in both directions over a maximum length of 100 meters of optical fiber.

The technology, which can be connected to CPUs and GPUs – a previously complicated task to achieve – addresses growing demand from AI infrastructure for higher bandwidth, lower power consumption and longer range.

Meeting the demand for AI

It is well known that AI-based applications, including LLM and generative AI, are driving unprecedented demand for I/O bandwidth and require longer reach to support larger CPU/GPU clusters. Electrical I/O, which relies on copper traces, offers high bandwidth density and low power consumption, but is limited to short distances. Intel claims that its co-packaged optical I/O solution can transmit data over much longer distances with higher efficiency and lower power consumption, which is critical for scaling AI/ML infrastructure.

The OCI chipset integrates a silicon photonic integrated circuit (PIC) with integrated lasers and optical amplifiers, as well as an electrical integrated circuit. It supports 4 Tbps bi-directional data transfer, compatible with PCIe Gen5, using 8 wavelengths at 200 GHz spacing over a single fiber. It also consumes only 5 picojoules (pJ) per bit, compared to 15 pJ/bit for pluggable optical transceiver modules.

Intel’s OCI chipset is still a prototype, but the company says it is working with some customers to co-package the OCI with system-on-chips (SoCs) and system-in-packages (SiPs).

“The ever-increasing movement of data from server to server is straining the capabilities of today’s data center infrastructure, and current solutions are rapidly approaching the practical limits of electrical I/O performance,” said Thomas Liljeberg, senior director of product management and strategy in Intel’s Integrated Photonics Solutions Group.

“However, Intel’s achievement enables customers to seamlessly integrate co-packaged silicon photonic interconnect solutions into next-generation compute systems and increases the reach, enabling ML workload acceleration that promises to revolutionize high-performance AI infrastructure.”