Applications

Avicena’s microLED interconnects are ideal for Scale Up applications, which require high shoreline density (> 1 Tbps/mm), ultra-low power (< 1 pJ/bit) connections with reaches up to 20 meters. This positions Avicena in the sweet spot between short reach copper (1 meter or less) and long reach optical interconnects (> 20 meters).

Copper dominates Scale Up today because it’s low cost, reliable and energy efficient. However, copper’s limited reach makes it impractical to scale beyond a few dozen GPUs. Standard optical technologies such as lasers and active optical cables are well suited to the longer connections between racks for Scale Out, but they’re too complex, power hungry and costly for Scale Up.

Unlike alternative approaches, Avicena’s µLED interconnects enable GPU clusters to Scale Up across multiple racks, linking thousands of GPUs, while achieving industry-leading sub-pJ/bit energy efficiency.

CPO
CPO remote HBMs LightBundle

Optical Memory Interconnects address the unique challenge of moving data between processors and memory with low latency and high bandwidth. Like Scale Up, this requires high density bandwidth, ultra-low power, and short reach connections, as well as new techniques such as memory disaggregation. microLED interconnects are particularly well suited for memory disaggregation because the “wide & slow" architecture has 100s to 1,000s of lanes each running at data rates of a few Gbps. 

For example, one of the bottlenecks in processor to memory interactions is the physical layout and placement of memory chips around the microprocessor, which effectively limits total capacity. Memory disaggregation addresses this challenge by moving the High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) away from the microprocessor, enabling larger memory banks. Avicena’s µLED interconnects with co-packaged optics provide high bandwidth connections between the microprocessor and memory banks.

Modern cars have a growing number of cameras and other sensors to support various safety devices and autonomous driving in the future.  Some of these connections are starting to require fairly high bandwidth.

LED based links are ideally suited for automotive applications because the fiber optic connections are lighter than copper connections and LEDs can withstand the high temperatures typical in the automotive environment whereas lasers cannot.

Autonomous Driving

The demand for high-speed wireless underwater communications is increasing, primarily due to the growth of off-shore wind turbines and the requirement to monitor their underwater structures.

Existing technologies fall short of the requirements for high-definition images and video requirements, necessary for this subsea monitoring. This has led to the development of optical solutions, using blue LEDs (blue light travels further in water than other wavelengths), but these existing systems are typically limited to data rates of < 10Mbps.

With Avicena’s LEDs it is possible to develop systems that can achieve data rates of greater than 10Gbps.

Ever more sensors and devices are now connected to the internet.  This is also known as the Internet of Things (IoT). 

E.g., modern camera sensors in smartphones are generating large amounts of data that need to be transported from the sensor to the processor in an efficient and non-intrusive fashion.  Again, any electrical connection in a smartphone can act as an antenna or interfere with the rest of the circuitry.  LED based interconnects do not suffer from this limitation, and they can tolerate the high temperature environment that some sensors operate in.

In 5G networks radio heads are getting ever more complex and consist of several different antennas all located in close proximity to each other.  This requires a tight network of interconnects which is achieved mostly with electrical connections today.

The challenge is that any electrical connection in a radio head also acts as a potential antenna.  There have been attempts at using other optical connections in the past, but laser efficiency starts to degrade at higher temperature, and past about 85°C laser failures increase significantly.  LEDs can operate well beyond 125°C without major impact on efficiency or reliability.