Breaking the Interconnect Bottleneck with Next-Gen Co-Packaged Optics

Technergetics, in partnership with Dartmouth College, is proud to announce the receipt of new R&D funding to accelerate the development of integrated photonic comb sources for DARPA Microsystems Technology Office (MTO)

This effort aims to solve the primary bottleneck in modern high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems: the interconnects between chips.

As modern computational workloads dominated by large language models (LLMs) push hardware to its limits, traditional copper and pluggable transceivers are reaching their physical boundaries in terms of bandwidth density and energy efficiency. While Silicon Photonics (SiPh) offers a path forward, a significant challenge remains: the lack of an integrated, efficient light source capable of producing the multiple wavelength channels required for Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM).

To address this, we are developing a compact, efficient, and low-cost photonic integrated circuit (PIC) combining robust wavelength generation and modulation on a transceiver chip.

Key features of this R&D effort include:

• Monolithic Integration: Combining optical components with high-speed modulators and photodetectors on a single platform.

• Thermal Stability: Implementing sophisticated locking algorithms and integrated thermal controls to maintain performance even under the harsh thermal conditions of a high-power XPU package.

• Energy Efficiency: Realizing turnkey multi-wavelength sources that enable unprecedented interconnect bandwidth density.

This effort will bridge a critical gap in the current landscape, moving beyond the limitations of standard transceivers to create a more efficient, integrated future for data center architecture.