ECOC22: Avicena demos microLED-array for chip-to-chip at 14G per lane

Avicena is demonstrating its LightBundle multi-Tbps chip-to-chip interconnect technology at this week's ECOC22 exhibition in Basel, Switzerland.

The company says the parallel nature of its LightBundle is well-matched to parallel chiplet interfaces like UCIe, OpenHBI, and BoW, and can also be used to extend the reach of existing compute interconnects like PCIe/CXL, and HBM/DDR/GDDR memory links, as well as various inter-processor interconnects like NVLink with low power and low latency.

“We have already demonstrated LightBundle links running at less than 1pJ/bit,” says Bardia Pezeshki, founder and CEO of Avicena, “Here at ECOC 2022 we are demonstrating individual microLED links running at 14Gbps. Compact, low-cost interconnects using hundreds of these links can support many terabits per second.” LightBundleTM is based on arrays of innovative GaN microLEDs that leverage the microLED display ecosystem and can be integrated directly onto high performance CMOS ICs. Each microLED array is connected via a multi-core fiber cable to a matching array of CMOS-compatible PDs.

“We have just closed our Series A funding with a distinguished group of existing and new investors,” continues Bardia Pezeshki. “And we will use the new funds to scale our team and build initial products for our growing family of partners and customers.”

Today’s high-performance ICs use SerDes-based electrical links to achieve adequate IO density. However, the power consumption and bandwidth density of these electrical links degrade quickly with length. Conventional optical communications technologies developed for networking applications have been impractical for inter-processor and processor-memory interconnects due to their low bandwidth density, high power consumption, and high cost. Moreover, co-packaging existing laser sources with hot ASICs does not fit well for reliability reasons unless external laser sources (ELS) are used which increases complexity and cost.

“All of this is now changing,” says Bardia Pezeshki. “We are developing ultra-low power, high-density optical transceivers based on microLED arrays. These innovative devices leverage recent display industry advances and would have been impractical just a few years ago. Our optimized links support up to 14Gbps per lane over -40°C to +125°C temperature with excellent reliability. A LightBundle interconnect uses hundreds of parallel optical lanes connecting a microLED-based optical transmitter array to a simple CMOS-based optical receiver array over multi-core fiber cables to create low-cost multi-Tbps interconnects with up to 10 meter reach.”

Avicena raises $25 million for microLED interconnects

Saturday, August 20, 2022  Optical, Start-Ups  

AvicenaTech, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, announced $25 million in Series A funding for its development of microLED-based chip-to-chip interconnects.Avicena's LightBundle technology is based on arrays of GaN micro-emitters that leverage the microLED display ecosystem. The company says this can be integrated onto a high-performance CMOS IC. “We are excited about closing our Series A funding with a distinguished group of existing...

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