Data Demands Drive Co-Packaged Silicon and Optics for Switch Fabrics

By Nitin Dahad, EETimes
March 12, 2020

When we talk about having billions of connected devices, that also means massive growth in data, as well as data centers with increased performance and network bandwidth to process that data. Modern data center switches rely on pluggable optics installed in the switch faceplate that are connected to switch serializer/deserializer (SerDes) ports using an electrical trace.

But as data center switch bandwidth grows to meet demand, connecting the SerDes to pluggable optics electrically will become more complex and require more power. This is likely to present bandwidth scalability challenges in terms of density, cost, and power; challenges that require tighter integration of optics and networking silicon.

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