Sun will be heading a research project on microchip interconnectivity funded by the Department of Defense to the tune of $44.29 million. The 5 1/2 year project will begin with $8.1 million provided to Sun Microsystems’ Microelectronics and Laboratories divisions which will be focusing on microchip interconnectivity via on-chip optical networks enabled by Silicon photonics and proximity communication.
The project will be working to develop supercomputers through interconnecting an array of low-cost chips. Sun’s program combines optical signaling with Proximity Communication, its key chip-to-chip I/O technology, to construct arrays of low-cost chips in a single virtual “macrochip.” Such an aggregation of inexpensive chips looks and performs like a single chip of enormous size, reports Sun. It also avoids soldered chip connections to enable lower total system cost. Long connections across the macrochip leverage the low latency, high bandwidth and low power of silicon optics. Sun and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will be researching technologies to further reduce the cost of these optical connections.
Dr. Jag Shah, program manager in DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office, commented, “DARPA’s UNIC (Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communications) program will demonstrate high performance photonic technology for high bandwidth, on-chip, photonic communications networks for advanced (≥ 10 trillion operations/second) microprocessors. By restoring the balance between computation and communications, the program will significantly enhance DoD’s capabilities for applications such as Image Processing, Autonomous Operations, Synthetic Aperture Radar, as well as supercomputing,”
By providing unprecedented high bandwidth, low latency and low power interconnections between the parallel computing chips in such an array, this research project could help other companies and organizations utilize applications with high compute and communication requirements, such as energy exploration, biotechnology and weather modeling.
“Optical communications could be a truly game-changing technology - an elegant way to continue impressive performance gains while completely changing the economics of large-scale silicon production,” said Greg Papadopoulos, CTO and executive vice president of research and development for Sun.
