High Power and Multi-Wavelength Laser Light Sources: How Can They Address the Needs of AI/ML Interco

Sunday, 30 March, 13:00 – 15:30

Room 215 (Level 2)

There has been an emerging need for laser light sources with new and improved capabilities to enable next generation optical interconnects – for scale-up and scale-out interconnect fabrics that are of particular importance in AI compute hardware.  Moving to higher laser output power is driven both by serial interfaces going to higher baud rates, and by interest in sharing the output of a single light source across multiple links in either serial or parallel interfaces. Meanwhile, tight integration of optical interconnect with processors and high total bandwidths are driving high wall-plug efficiency.  And, the mapping of wide parallel interfaces like UCIe to optics is calling for a roadmap of multi-wavelength sources with 8, 16 and perhaps more wavelengths, as well as multi-port output, leading a single laser source package into the multiple-watts domain.

This workshop will address progress and different approaches in increasing power, wall-plug efficiency, and wavelength and port count in lasers for next-gen interconnects, with an emphasis on not only performance (power, temperature stability, wavelength spacing uniformity, power imbalance, etc.), but also reliability, serviceability, cost, and potential for scaling on a roadmap that supports the growing compute needs in the years to come.

Some questions that will be addressed:

• What are the key advantages and disadvantages of DFB laser/laser array based, Kerr and electro-optic comb based, mode-locked laser based, and other approaches to multi-wavelength sources, in the short and long term?
• How to address the challenges of achieving higher power/multi-wavelength without compromising performance, complexity, and reliability?
• Is SOA integration a viable approach to increasing power and does it justify the added noise and complexity?
• Are integrated and remote light sources both viable options for OIO and CPO in terms of power, efficiency, reliability…?

Organizers

Speakers