Photonics.institute
Key Technical Features Port Configuration and Speed
The Quantum-X Photonics switch provides 144 ports of 800 gigabits per second (Gb/s) InfiniBand, based on 200 Gb/s SerDes (serialiser/deserialiser) technology.
Total bandwidth capability of approximately 115.2 terabits per second (Tb/s) per switch (144 ports × 800 Gb/s).
2x faster speeds compared to the previous generation of Quantum switches, making it ideal for high intensity AI workloads.
Faster & More Efficient Computing
Optical Computing: photonic chips use light (photons) instead of electrons, enabling ultra fast data processing with minimal heat generation.
AI Acceleration: photonic neural networks can perform matrix multiplications at the speed of light, drastically improving AI training and inference.
Co-processing with Silicon: Hybrid electronic photonic chips (like those from Ayar Labs, Lightmatter) will enhance traditional CPUs/GPUs with optical interconnects.
Next Generation Data Centers & Telecoms
Optical Interconnects: replacing copper wires with photonic links (e.g. Nvidia’s NVLink over optics) will reduce latency and energy consumption in data centres.
Co-packaged Optics (CPO): integrating photonics directly with processors (e.g. Intel, Broadcom) will boost bandwidth beyond 100Tbps.
6G & LiFi: photonics will enable ultra high speed wireless communication (terahertz frequencies) and light-based LiFi networks.
Quantum Photonics
Quantum Computing: photonic qubits (e.g. PsiQuantum, Xanadu) offer room-temperature operation and scalability for error corrected quantum computers.
Quantum Communication: secure quantum networks (QKD) will rely on photonic chips for unhackable data transmission.
Biomedical & Sensing Applications
Lab-on-a-Chip: photonic sensors can detect diseases (e.g. cancer biomarkers) in real time with high sensitivity.
LIDAR & Imaging: self-driving cars and AR/VR will use ultra-compact photonic LIDAR for precise depth sensing.
Material & Manufacturing Breakthroughs
Silicon Photonics (SiPh): leveraging existing CMOS fabs for cost-effective mass production (e.g. GlobalFoundries, TSMC).
New Materials: lithium niobate (LiNbO3), graphene, and 2D materials will enable faster modulators and detectors.
3D Photonic Integration: stacking photonic layers will increase complexity while keeping footprints small.
Energy Efficiency & Sustainability
Photonic chips consume 10-100x less power than electronic chips for data transfer, crucial for green computing.
Optical computing could reduce the carbon footprint of large AI models and data centres.
Challenges Ahead
Cost & Scalability: while silicon photonics is maturing, exotic materials remain expensive.
Thermal & Packaging Issues: managing heat in tightly integrated photonic electronic systems.
Standardization: industry wide protocols for photonic interconnects are still evolving.
Key players and startups, at present
Intel, IBM, TSMC (Silicon Photonics),Nvidia, Ayar Labs, Lightmatter (AI & HPC),PsiQuantum, Xanadu (Quantum Photonics),Rockley Photonics, Luminous Computing (emerging innovators).
NVIDIA silicon photonics networking switches are available as part of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics Ethernet and NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand platforms.
NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics switches include multiple configurations, including 128 ports of 800Gb/s or 512 ports of 200Gb/s, delivering 100Tb/s total bandwidth, as well as 512 ports of 800Gb/s or 2,048 ports of 200Gb/s, for a total throughput of 400Tb/s.
“A new wave of AI factories requires efficiency and minimal maintenance to achieve the scale required for next-generation workloads,” said C. C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC. “TSMC’s silicon photonics solution combines our strengths in both cutting-edge chip manufacturing and TSMC-SoIC 3D chip stacking to help NVIDIA unlock an AI factory’s ability to scale to a million GPUs and beyond, pushing the boundaries of AI.”
The even more advanced future Metaphotonics
These are bulk, 3D materials composed of a periodic array of subwavelength structures (the "artificial atoms").
Key Concept: Their properties do not come from their base material (e.g., plastic, silicon) but from their designed geometrical structure.
The ‘Killer App’: Negative Refraction Index. This is the most famous property of some metamaterials. It means that when light crosses the boundary between air and this material, it refracts (bends) to the same side of the normal line, opposite to what happens in conventional materials like glass or water. This enables perfect lensing and cloaking.
Challenge: Building 3D metamaterials that work for visible light is extremely difficult and lossy, as the required structures are nanometres in size.
Metasurfaces. These are the 2D version of metamaterials. They are ultra thin, engineered surfaces composed of an array of nano antennas (often made of silicon or metal).
The ‘Killer App’: Flat Optics. Metasurfaces can replace bulky, curved, traditional optical components (like lenses and prisms) with a simple, flat surface. A single metasurface can perform the function of multiple conventional optics.
Advantage: They are much easier to fabricate (using standard chip making technology) and have lower energy loss than 3D metamaterials, making them commercially viable.
Metaphotonics is the frontier of light control. It moves us from using the materials to engineering materials with exactly the properties we need, enabling a new generation of ultra compact, high performance, and multifunctional optical devices.
Metaphotonics is the frontier of light control. It moves us from using the materials to engineering materials with exactly the properties we need, enabling a new generation of ultra compact, high performance, and multifunctional optical devices.
A metaphotonic chip is a flat, typically silicon based, chip that uses an array of metasurfaces (and sometimes metamaterial elements) to manipulate light signals directly on the chip itself. Instead of using wires and transistors to move electrons, it uses nano antennas to guide and process light.
Building on the foundation of metaphotonics, a metaphotonic chip (also commonly called an integrated metaphotonic circuit or optical metachip) is the practical implementation of this technology. It's the next evolutionary step in photonics, aiming to replace or augment traditional electronic integrated circuits (ICs) and conventional photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for specific tasks.
NEW DISCOVERIES
Ultra High Parallelism Architecture
Integrated on-chip multi-wavelength light sources & high speed optical interaction.
Meteor-1 Chip (Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics). Overcomes computational density bottleneck. Enables high computing power photonic supercomputers
Single Shot Tensor Computing
Encodes data into light's amplitude/phase, processes complex tensor operations in a single light pass.
Research Prototype (Aalto University.)
Execute AI operations (e.g. convolutions) at light speed with extreme energy efficiency.
Large Scale Photonic Accelerator
Large scale (16,000+ components) integration for optical Matrix Multiplication.
PACE Chip (Academic/Industry Collaboration).
Achieve order of magnitude lower latency
Polarisation Based Computing
Uses different light polarisations as independent information channels.
Research Prototype (University of Oxford).
Maximise information storage density and enable parallel processing.
Diffractive & Interferenc Based Optical Neural Networks (ONNs).
Uses light diffraction and interference in structured materials for all optical inference.
Taichi Chip at Tsinghua University.
Create large scale, reconfigurable ONNs for complex tasks like content generation and classification .