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The next generation of optics technology enables connectivity within data centres at the speed of light through optics to complement existing short reach electrical wires .

By designing and assembling the first publicly announced successful polymer optical waveguide ( PWG ) to power this technology , IBM researchers have shown how CPO will redefine the way the computing industry transmits highbandwidth data between chips , circuit boards and servers .

Although data centres use fibre optics for their external communications networks , racks in data centres still predominantly run communications on copper-based electrical wires . These wires connect GPU accelerators that may spend more than half of their time idle , waiting for data from other devices in a large , distributed training process which can incur significant expense and energy .

• Lower costs for scaling Generative AI through a more than 5x power reduction in energy consumption compared to mid-range electrical interconnects , while extending the length of data centre interconnect cables from one to hundreds of metres

• Faster AI model training , enabling developers to train a Large Language Model ( LLM ) up to 5x faster with CPO than with conventional electrical wiring . CPO could reduce the time it takes to train a standard LLM from three months to three weeks , with performance gains increasing by using larger models and more GPUs

• Dramatically increased energy efficiency for data centres , saving the energy equivalent of 5,000 US homes ' annual power consumption per AI model trained

" As Generative AI demands more energy and processing power , the data centre must evolve – and co-packaged optics can make these data centre futureproof ," said Dario Gil , SVP and Director of Research , IBM .

" With this breakthrough , tomorrow ' s chips will communicate much like how fibre optics cables carry data in and out of data centres , ushering in a new era of faster , more sustainable communications that can handle the AI workloads of the future ,” added Gil .

CPO technology aims to scale the interconnection density between accelerators by enabling chipmakers to add optical pathways connecting chips on an electronic module beyond the limits of today ' s electrical pathways . IBM ' s paper outlines how these new high bandwidth density optical structures , coupled with transmitting multiple wavelengths per optical channel , have the potential to boost bandwidth between chips as much as 80x compared to electrical connections . �

INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS

IBM researchers have demonstrated a way to bring optics ' speed and capacity inside data centres .

In a technical paper , IBM introduces a new CPO prototype module that can enable high-speed optical connectivity . This technology could significantly increase the bandwidth of data centre communications , minimising GPU downtime while drastically accelerating AI processing . This research innovation , as described , would enable :

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