At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Diane Bryant, Executive VP of Data Center Group, announced that the Intel Silicon Photonics is now available in high-volume production and is being shipped in the form of 100G optional transceivers. The products Intel Silicon Photonics 100G PSM4 (Parallel Single Mode fiber 4-lane) and Intel Silicon Photonics 100G CWDM4 (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing 4-lane) are small form-factor, high speed, and low power consumption products, targeted for use in data communications applications, in particular for switch-to-switch optical interconnects in data centers.

Image Source: itpeernetwork.intel.com/



Intel in its Intel in its official blog states,

“The announcement marks a major milestone; the commercialization and high-volume deployment of silicon photonics has been anticipated by the industry for years, with optical networking vendors and operators looking towards the day when we would see the integration of optics onto silicon CMOS technology, with all the scale and manufacturing capability that it brings.”





Intel informs us that in cloud data centers across the world, the demand for connectivity is rising quickly, especially machine-to-machine traffic. Hence, the network is not able to keep up with the data computing or growth along with storage performance. Hence, in order to scale bandwidth and remove the constraints, cloud services are currently looking for different ways to achieve higher-speed connectivity which is possible through copper wires, while at the same time using less power, with the most cost effective technology and implementation. Hence, this is where the Intel Silicon Photonics will go on to revolutionize the data center, states the company.

The company states,

“Intel Silicon Photonics combines the manufacturing scale and capability of silicon with the power of light onto a single chip. It allows us to build silicon-based components that can transmit and receive optical signals, moving large amounts of information at 100 gigabit-per-second over long distances of up to several kilometers on fiber optic cables. Today, these products are already being deployed to connect switches to switches in large data centers; in the future, as bandwidth to the server increases, the optical network will connect servers, displacing the copper interconnects that are increasingly limited in reach as bandwidth goes up.”

Intel informs us that on the switch side, 100G will now go on to give way to 400G within a few years. The density requirements will go on to push the front-plate pluggable optics to on-board optics, to integrate with switch ASIC, as electrical I/O bandwidth and density becomes unable to support the total switch bandwidth and density becomes unable to support the total switch bandwidth and radix. However, Intel’s Silicon Photonics is quite uniquely positioned so as to enable and lead this particular development, as the most flexible and compact optical integration platform available.

Intel in the blog post states,

“To get there, we expect to see increases of up to 100x in bandwidth density (Gbps/mm2) and improvements by up to 3x in power consumption per Gbps1. The announcement today at IDF marks the beginning of this; more than announcing a product, we are celebrating the maturity and readiness of a technology platform that offers the density, bandwidth, reach, and cost required for future data centers and their optical connectivity needs.”