April 9, 2020
The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI is part of the research and innovation project POETICS along with seven other consortium members. The project is funded by the European Union as part of the Horizon 2020 program and aims to harness optical data communications with all its performance, functionality, and cost advantages to enable the scaling of data centers and the growth of wired infrastructures for further 5G deployment.
The cost-effective provision of optical interconnects with terabit-capacity requires a paradigm shift in the packaging approach, as the electrical interconnect distance between the optical engine (OE) and the digital switching chip must be minimized. In addition, signal conditioning chips and unwanted components, such as sockets, which would otherwise be required and inevitably lead to increased power consumption and reduced signal integrity, should be removed. Finally, the right combination of photonic and electronic technology must be integrated to deliver high-performance, low-cost and energy efficient optical engines.
POETICS will develop novel terabit optical engines as well as optical switching circuits and co-package them with digital switching chips. This enables Multi-Chip Modules (MCM) for next-generation switching equipment with >12.8 Tb/s capacities and very high energy efficiency that fit into the roadmap of vendors. In order to achieve these goals POETICS will utilize SiGe BiCMOS, InP, PolyBoard, and TriPleX technologies and rely on hybrid integration, which allows the selection and combination of the best performing components.
POETICS is coordinated by the Institute of Communications & Computer Systems (Greece). Besides Fraunhofer HHI, the project consortium includes LioniX International BV (Netherlands), Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum (Belgium), Optagon Photonics (Greece), PHIX BV (Netherlands), Mellanox Technologies Ltd- MLNX (Israel) and Telecom Italia Spa (Italy).
More information about the project can be found here .