At OFC 2024, several companies showcased a variety of LPO modules and delivered presentations on this topic at the forum. Lightcounting has provided insights into market trends for high-speed optical modules, and some companies have referenced this data to suggest that LPO modules will become a critical low-power, low-latency option for AI applications in the 800G (and future 1.6T) pluggable optical module market, as well as in the 400G and above AOC market.
Below are the demands for LPO in the Ethernet and AOC markets:
By 2028, the total sales of 800G and 1.6T optical modules are expected to exceed $6 billion.
In the AOC market, 400G and above products will dominate.
The LPO (without DSP) pluggable optical module technology can also be applied to AOC.
When the LPO is removed, the delay will be reduced, which is conducive to improving the efficiency between AI calculation and network transmission.
The impact of GPU-to-GPU network latency on communication
According to current AI computing estimates, a 32k-level GPU cluster has a total optical module power consumption of 1.6MW (1600 kW). Future clusters are projected to increase this number to 4600 kW. Considering these development trends, we believe it is crucial to reduce the power consumption of 800G (2x400G) optical modules to below 8W.
Current Generative AI Clusters:
Total optical module power: 1.6MW for 32k GPUs
Future Larger AI Clusters:
Expandable unit: DGX GH200 "SuperPod"
Total power of GPU optical modules: 4.6MW for 32k GPUs
Optical module power consumption requirements
Let's again compare the power differences between with and without DSP.
In the LPO solution, BER curves and power consumption data based on silicon photonics integration were presented. At OFC 2024, several companies demonstrated various LPO solutions:
Silicon photonics solutions showed superior performance.
800G LPO power consumption is less than 8W.
Power consumption: 6.5W at room temperature, 7.6W at high temperature.
Silicon photonics-based LPO solutions exhibit better performance. Various companies are developing different LPO solutions, including VCSEL, EML, SiPh, and TFLN. Among these, the silicon photonics (SiPh) based LPO solution demonstrated excellent performance:
Power consumption: 6.5W at room temperature, 7.6W at high temperature.
We can provided Tungsten copper substrate for the optical module development.
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