No Static Currents
The best power is the one you save. Data center power dissipation has been increasing far beyond the power reduction efforts of the industry. This because of the massive scaling imposed by the application.
Therefore more game-changing technologies are needed for each DSP, laser, and optical engine subsystems. Plasmonic modulators offer a different electro-optic approach with distinct advantages.
Features
- No static 50 Ω termination currents
- No bias circuits on the RF path
- Lower EOM capacitance to be switched
- High-impedance operation: power is only dissipated if PAM signal changes level
Tx Optical Engine (TOE) Power
The plasmonic EOM is essentially a capacitive device, whose dimension is proportional to the size. Since plasmonic phase shifters are two orders of magnitude smaller than other those of other platforms, one can understand that the effective switched load is much smaller and just in the order of 30 fF.
The consequence is that the driver circuit consumes an order of magnitude of power than the modulator
Features
- 10 mW EOM power dissipation from a high-Z driver
- 10 mW modulator control circuit power dissipation
- 200 mW total power dissipation including 3rd party commercial driver
Sub-pJ per Bit Optical Engine
Therefore we are setting the standard for low-power optical engine to below 200 mW per lane, and 0.5 pJ/bit in a 400G per lane application.
Doing this there is no particular processing requirement that has been moved to the DSP and would cause more power dissipation there. Instead the carefully engineered RF properties of the signal path provide a higher level of signal linearity and ultimately less work for the equalization.
Features
- 1.6 W power dissipation for driver, control and modulator and 8 lanes