Patent reveals AMD is working on developing photonics technology
Intel announced at the end of last year that Intel Labs established the Interconnect Integrated Photonics Research Center, which brings together photonics and circuit researchers from multiple universities to advance research and development efforts in data center integrated photonics, paving the way for the next decade of computing interconnects. Intel has previously stated that its long-term vision is to integrate photonics with low-cost, high-volume silicon integrated production.
As Intel’s old rival, AMD also seems to have its sights set on photonics technology. An AMD patent filed in 2020 describes a system that allows a photonics-based communication system to connect directly to the chip. Using light for transmission will obviously be faster, and there will be no resistive losses in media like copper, which can improve energy efficiency, ultimately, the performance of information transmission will be improved, and latency and power consumption will also be improved, resulting in better scalability.
AMD’s patent doesn’t describe it in detail, just the manufacturing steps needed to handle a chip based on photon input and output. Clearly, such a chip, unlike what is common today, will integrate a photonic chip and a silicon chip on an organic redistribution layer (ORDL).
AMD’s patents show that new ways to improve scalability beyond what traditional semiconductors allow are being sought. The gains from increased transistor density have been declining in recent years, but the demands of computing have not, and designers have had to look for more creative ways to improve performance, especially energy efficiency.
Nowadays, the traditional air-cooled heat dissipation method has basically reached its limit, and Intel has recently promoted the research of immersion liquid-cooled heat dissipation technology. The introduction of photonics, which can simultaneously improve information transmission speed and energy efficiency without increasing heat, seems to be a more secure and realistic solution.
