Ranovus, IBM, TE Connectivity and Senko team on Co-Packaged Optics

Ranovus has formed a strategic collaboration with IBM, TE Connectivity, and Senko Advanced Components to create an ecosystem to design and manufacture multi-vendor solutions for Co-Packaged Optics applications in data center.

RANOVUS will provide its Odin silicon photonics engine, which incorporates the company’s multi-wavelength Quantum Dot Laser (QDL), 100Gbps Silicon Photonics based Micro Ring Resonator modulators and photodetectors, 100Gbps Driver, 100Gbps TIA and control Integrated Circuits in a power efficient and cost-effective EPIC in a single chip.

IBM will provide optical interconnect technologies that enable automated and scalable assembly for co-packaged optics. IBM’s fiber V-groove interconnect packaging technology is a robust and reliable assembly technique to interface optical fibers to silicon photonics devices. This process makes use of passive alignment techniques and achieves low insertion loss across a wide spectral range in both the O-band and C-band regimes. The solution is scalable in physical channel count and the automated process provides a path to high-volume manufacturing of co-packaged optics.

TE will demonstrate its CP fine pitch socket technology combined with thermal management using Thermal Bridge technology to illustrate integrated co-packaging solutions. TE’s co-packaged (CP) fine pitch socket interposer technology enables integration of small chipset and optical engine component technologies into high-value co-package assemblies with reworkable and interoperable interfaces.  The signal integrity performance of the CP fine pitch socket interposer technology can be critical to 100 Gbps high density electrical packaging requirements.  The integration of TE’s thermal bridge technology completes the assembly by providing an innovative solution for thermal management of the switch, serializer/deserializer (SerDes), and optics necessary for high reliability and long operating life.

SENKO will demonstrate its fiber optic connectivity solutions for optical coupling, on-board/mid-board, and faceplate. SENKO’s fiber optic connectivity solutions for optical coupling, on-board/mid-board, and faceplate support 100Gbps/lane and beyond Co-Packaged Optics equipment designs. These include low profile and precision Fiber coupler assemblies, micro sized on-/mid-board connectors, reflow compatible connector assemblies, and space saving connector options for faceplate. These will provide more efficiency, scalability, and flexibility in designs for Co-Packaged Optics equipment.

The companies said the co-packaging of optics and Ethernet switch ICs is a natural next step to reduce the power consumption burden of the electrical I/Os in the data center networking equipment.  The transition of the Ethernet switch IC SER/DES from 50Gbps to 100Gbps, in 25.6Tbps and 51.2Tbps switch configurations, presents a unique inflection point in the architecture of the Ethernet switch systems.