This research was performed by Songtao Liu, Ranjeet Kumar, Xinru Wu, Xiaoxi Wang, Duanni Huang, Guan-lin Su, Junyi Gao, and Haisheng Rong.
Highlights:
- The 2025 Optical Fiber Communication Conference ran from March 30th to April 3rd in San Francisco, California.
- Intel was proud to present a four-lane silicon photonics dense wavelength-division multiplexing transmitter powered by a single heterogeneously integrated multi-wavelength distributed feedback laser and semiconductor optical amplifier, enabling simultaneous four-channel operation at 26 Gbps per lane, scalable to 53 Gbps per lane.
- This novel design is easily scalable to 32 lanes or more and opens the door to multi-terabits-per-second per fiber optical interconnects with improved energy efficiency and a smaller chip footprint.
The 2025 Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference is the largest conference and exhibition for optical networking and communications professionals. OFC brings you the latest on photonic integrated circuits, quantum communications, AI for optical networking, solutions for network operators, and more. The event ran from March 30th to April 3rd in San Francisco, California. Intel was proud to present innovations in area reduction for multi-wavelength laser for integrated input-output (I/O) at this year’s conference.
The continued improvement of AI algorithms has driven the development of models with hundreds of trillions of parameters. However, such large-scale training models are extremely computationally intensive, requiring computing infrastructure with enough throughput to efficiently move training data between large numbers of nodes. Bandwidth limits, high latency, and power consumption limit the scale out of traditional electrical-based interconnects that link different nodes. In comparison, optical I/O interconnects offer a promising solution for energy-efficient scale-out architectures due to:
- Lower power consumption
- Lower latency
- Much greater than 1m data transmission reach
Current reported dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) based optical I/O architectures generally utilize multiple single wavelength distributed feedback (DFB) lasers as the light source, either configured externally or heterogeneously integrated. Multiplexers are needed to combine all the carriers into one optical path; however, this introduces additional insertion loss in the link. To improve energy efficiency, Intel researchers proposed a laser technology that can emit multiwavelength to eliminate the combiner as well as conserve the useful space on chip. Moreover, through heterogeneous integration, it minimizes the coupling loss between the laser and the following photonic integrated circuits (PICs).
Leveraging Intel’s previously developed single gain section four-wavelength DFB laser technique, Intel researchers designed and demonstrated a high-speed SiPh transmitter, which features a single fully integrated four-wavelength DFB laser, paired with four high-speed micro ring modulators, targeting DWDM optical I/O applications. It is fabricated using Intel’s high-volume 300-mm silicon photonics manufacturing process. The transmitter achieves a Bit Error Ratio (BER) of less than 1e-12, with a potential aggregate bandwidth of 212 Gbps. Unlike conventional single-wavelength DFB laser-based architectures, this novel design is easily scalable to 32 lanes or more.
Looking to the Future
At last year’s OFC conference, Intel’s Integrated Photonics Solutions Group demonstrated the industry’s most advanced and first-ever fully integrated optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet co-packaged with an Intel CPU and running live data. Intel’s OCI chiplet represented a significant milestone in high-bandwidth interconnect by enabling co-packaged optical I/O in emerging AI infrastructure for data centers and high-performance computing applications.
As the AI infrastructure landscape continues to evolve rapidly, Intel is committed to driving innovation and shaping the future of connectivity. As part of this goal, Intel researchers are constantly working on a roadmap of technologies that will feed into the future implementation and performance scaling of OCI. Due to its scalability, Intel’s latest advancement in multi-wavelength lasers opens the door to multi-terabits-per-second per fiber optical interconnects with improved energy efficiency and a smaller chip footprint.
James leads the PHY Research Lab in Intel Labs. Research areas include electrical and optical I/O circuits, photonic devices and systems, prototype characterization and test methods, and link system modeling.