A fully integrated optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet from Intel delivers up to 4 Tbps of bidirectional data transfer. The company’s Integrated Photonics Solutions (IPS) Group hosted a live demonstration of the chiplet co-packaged with an Intel CPU at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) 2024. Designed to meet the high-bandwidth demands of emerging AI infrastructure, the chiplet is well-suited for data centers and HPC applications.
This first OCI implementation supports 64 PCIe 5.0 channels transmitting 32 Gbps in both directions—4 Tbps total—over distances of up to 100 meters using fiber optics. It uses dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) and consumes just 5 pico-Joules per bit. This is significantly more energy-efficient than pluggable optical transceiver modules, which consume about 15 pico-Joules per bit, according to Intel.
The OCI chiplet combines a silicon photonics IC, which includes on-chip lasers and optical amplifiers, with an electrical IC. While the chiplet demonstrated was co-packaged with an Intel CPU, it can be integrated with next-generation CPUs, GPUs, IPUs, and other SoCs.
Intel’s current optical I/O chiplet is a prototype. The company is working with select customers to integrate the chiplet with their SoCs.
For more information about Intel silicon photonics and the OCI chiplet, click here.
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