Optical interconnects: follow "actinic" trend lifeline

If the light sensor is to support all interconnected neural networks, the optical interconnection is supporting all interconnected lifeline.

We know that broadband Internet, on the one hand depends on the broadband high-speed backbone network, on the other hand relies on large volumes of data center, and the data center is needed in the short-distance high-capacity dense data exchange and transfer.

The traditional use of copper electrical interconnect data centers which have been difficult to meet the demand for high-speed bulk data transfer and exchange. Then the high-capacity data center, how to meet such high-speed short-range intensive data exchange and transfer it?

Now widely recognized by the scientific community is the use of active optical cable (AOC). AOC applications first, data centers and high-performance computers, both have to use a lot of servers connected to each other (computing unit), routers (switching unit) and memory (storage unit), "In the world ranking of the Milky Way computer for example, it has thousands of computing units and switching units, requiring high-speed low-power interconnect, and AOC can satisfy these needs. "

With the advent of the era of big data development and application scenarios, AOC will become the main form of ultra-wideband interconnection, the market will gradually grow.

Because the technology development and background, from communications to interconnected world, is forming a "actinic" trend: the long-distance backbone network, to the access network, fiber to the home, to the LAN and between racks connection, which is already the world of light; and from between machines, between the circuit board, and then between the integrated circuit chip, have gradually become electrically connected by optical interconnects.

In this "actinic" trend in active optical cable (AOC) with its high transfer rate, low energy consumption, high mounting density, low crosstalk, long connection distance or time delay, anti-electromagnetic interference and other prominent advantages , will play an increasingly important role in the interconnection between the racks, between the machine and the circuit board in between.

Infineon RPR chip solution

Infineon of FreaTM PoS Framer / RPR MAC IC is the industry's first draft protocol IEEE 802.17 RPR (Resilient Packet Ring) version 2.1-compliant 10G RPR chip, which is the Infineon existing optical networking solutions the latest addition.

Infineon said the product integrates the previous IC requires a minimum of four to complete the function, with a high degree of integration, thus greatly reducing the cost of user equipment, power consumption, size, and complexity of the software and hardware design.

RPR technology support high-speed optical network system Ethernet communication, the launch of the Infineon chip can complete PoS (Packet-over-SONET) into frame unit, RPR MAC (Media Access Control) and XAUI SerDes (serializer / deserializer string) function, which are necessary for the deployment of RPR in the metro and wide area networks. At the same time, the chip built-in 1MB of memory, support for 16-bit 800MHz SPI-4.2 and 4 3.125GHz XAUI interface, so when configuring RPR, no need for external SerDes products can connect two chips together.