Optoelectronic integrated circuits for growing datacenters: challenge, strategy, and evolution

Hyper scale datacenters drive amazing Ethernet volumes when thousands of servers are connected on one site, which creates high-density interconnect links between servers, switches and routers. Optical technologies are considered as possible solutions to meet the future datacenter requirements in terms of cost, power consumption, port density and performance. In this paper, evolution of optoelectronic integrated circuits technologies for reducing power consumption, improving port density and decreasing the cost of datacenter optical network, such as miniaturization of optoelectronic chips, high density optical coupling, electro-optical co-packaging and integration of nano-scale optical switch, will be outlined, as well as the progresses in research and industrial activities.