Co-Packaged Photonics for High Performance Computing: Status, Challenges and Opportunities

Photonics die or integrated photonics modules co-packaged with compute engines have the potential to deliver significant improvements in power, bandwidth and reach needed to meet the computing and communication demands of data centers and other high-performance computing (HPC) systems. The challenges and solutions in co-packaging photonics modules are described through two case studies; one of a network-switch die co-packaged with socketable photonics modules and another of a FPGA co-packaged with optical dies (tiles). The technical requirements to deliver the promise of co-packaged photonics in high volume are outlined.