imec Report: Roadmap for Scaling Optical Interconnects in the AI Era
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imec has released a report noting that copper interconnects face power consumption and signal integrity limits over long distances and at high speeds, becoming a key bottleneck for AI system scaling, making optical interconnects a critical path forward. The report traces the evolution of pluggable optical modules: speeds have risen from 100/200G to 800G; first-generation 1.6T modules use a 200Gbps per-lane, eight-lane parallel architecture and are now approaching sampling. Looking ahead, the industry is targeting 3.2T by the end of the decade and exploring up to 12.8T with extreme pluggable optics (XPO).
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- Semiconductor Engineering Chips and PackagingThe imec Report: Scaling Optical Interconnects For The AI Era
An imec report notes that copper interconnects face power and signal integrity limitations at long distances and high speeds, becoming a key bottleneck for scaling AI systems, with optical interconnects as the critical path. Pluggable optical modules have grown from 100/200G to 800G, first-generation 1.6T modules based on a 200Gbps-per-lane, eight-lane parallel architecture are nearing sampling, the industry is targeting 3.2T by the end of the decade, and extreme pluggable optics (XPO) up to 12.8T are being explored.
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