About Featured Expert: Ayar Labs

Ayar Labs are global industry experts in optical I/O, co-packaged optics and chiplet-based interconnect technologies for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing systems. The company develops optical engines that move data directly into and out of advanced processors, accelerators and switch silicon. Its work is concentrated at the edge of the compute package, where electrical interconnect length, bandwidth density and power consumption increasingly affect wider system scale.

Ayar Labs’ architecture combines its TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet with the SuperNova external light source. TeraPHY is integrated within the same package as the host XPU, ASIC or switch and converts electrical data into optical signals close to the compute device. SuperNova supplies the wavelengths used by those optical engines from outside the package. By keeping the light source separate from the optical chiplet, the laser system can remain outside the processor package while electro-optical conversion takes place close to the device. A single multiport source can also support several optical engines across the system.

Featured Expert Logo - Photonics Industry MonthlyThe current TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet uses a UCIe interface and supports up to 8 Tbps of optical bandwidth. Its wavelength-division multiplexing architecture carries multiple optical channels through each fiber connection. This increases the amount of data that can leave the package without requiring a corresponding increase in electrical traces around the processor.

This Ayar Labs approach is being developed for scale-up fabrics connecting GPUs, accelerators, memory and switches within and beyond the rack. Optical I/O provides a way to extend high-bandwidth communication beyond the practical reach of conventional electrical links while maintaining direct connectivity among the devices involved. The technology is increasingly relevant within AI and high-performance computing systems, where larger groups of processors must continuously exchange model, memory and synchronization data. System performance depends not only upon the capabilities of each processor, but also upon the available bandwidth among them.

In addition, Ayar Labs has developed TeraPHY around standard CMOS manufacturing, silicon photonics and established advanced-packaging methods. The company also works with foundries, packaging providers, fiber-connectivity specialists, ASIC developers and system manufacturers on the integration of optical I/O into processors, switches and larger computing platforms. Its current work includes expanding production and test capability for TeraPHY and SuperNova and supporting co-packaged optical designs for accelerator, switch and rack-scale computing applications.

Ayar Labs’ technologies therefore extend across the optical chiplet, external light source, electrical interface, fiber connection and packaging architecture required to bring optical communication closer to the processor. Typical applications include AI accelerators, high-performance computing, data-center switches, chip-to-chip connectivity, memory expansion, disaggregated computing and other systems requiring high-bandwidth communication among densely interconnected processors.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Ayar Labs also maintains operations in Massachusetts and Taiwan. To learn more about Ayar Labs and its optical I/O technologies, please click here. 

(Editor’s Note: All trademarks mentioned in this article, including company names, product names, and logos, are the property of their respective owners. Use of these trademarks is for informational purposes only and does not imply any endorsement.)

Molly Bakewell Chamberlin
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