What is high performance computing?The main products in the HPC group are CPU, GPU, AI and other chips, and the companies represented include AMD, NVIDIA, Cisco, Intel, Xilinx, etc. The applications are in the data center and cloud computing, and the technologies used in this field are the most advanced.At present, there are more than 600 hyperscale data centers in the world, which are increasing at a rate of about 10% every year. It is estimated that this year's investment will exceed 200 billion US dollars.Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Alibaba make up the top five, with Amazon investing $26 billion in data center construction last year.The total amount of data transmitted by data centers in one year is estimated to reach 15 Zettabytes this year, and grow at a rate of 20% per year; and a Zettabyte is a billion times Terabyte.75% of these data volumes are transmitted within the data center, which is short-distance, and the rest is the transmission between data centers and between them and users.The main equipment in the data center includes a server that processes electrical signal transmission and computation, a switch that processes the conversion between optical signals and electrical signals, and a memory module that stores data; The switch can be used as a transmitting and receiving optical signal module (optical T/R module), which can also be independent.There is no doubt that the technology used in the most advanced data centers is the most advanced.Almost all of the CPU, GPU and AI chips in servers are produced using process technologies below 7nm, including the ASICs used in switches.On the one hand, it requires higher computing speed, and on the other hand, it also hopes to save power.The solid-state drive (SSD) storage used is also the most advanced 128-layer stacked NAND, and each solid-state drive module has a capacity of more than 10 Tera bytes.The transmission speed of optical communication modules is also required to reach 400 Gbps (giga bits per sec) in the data center, and the current speed of the backbone optical fiber network is below 100 Gbps.Even in the supply of power, painstaking efforts are also made, and even the conversion efficiency can be increased by 0.1%.Therefore, the data center is the best source of driving force for the development of new technologies and new products. It is no exaggeration.The same technique is also used in optical communication. For example, optical signals of different wavelengths are carried in one optical fiber, and they will not interfere with each other. This is wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to improve each The amount of data transmitted within a fiber.By modulating the intensity/amplitude (pulse amplitude modulation; PAM) of the light wave, it is possible to increase the data of 1 bit carried by one symbol to more than 2 bits.If phase shift keying (PSK) is used, there is an opportunity to carry more bits of data, while increasing the amount of transmission per fiber to meet the ever-increasing demand.In the 400 Gbps optical fiber transmission system, silicon photonics (Si photonic) technology has also been used.Silicon photonics technology uses a sophisticated silicon semiconductor process platform to combine passive components such as wave guides, splitters, combiners and phase modulators required for optical communication. Even photo-detectors of active components are fabricated on silicon substrates or SOI (Si on insulator) substrates.Silicon photonics technology not only provides optical components, but also integrates semiconductor laser chips and ICs that process electrical signals on the same platform to achieve miniaturization and reduce signal transmission losses.The role played by silicon photonics is similar to that of Si interposer in 3DIC, using TSV (through Si via) to integrate various components on different substrates into a miniaturized packaging technology on a platform.In the future, for optical communication modules above 400 Gbps, silicon photonics technology will become more and more important. This is why big companies are desperately buying silicon photonics companies in recent years. Seeing the sun, he raised his eyebrows and exhaled.The trend in recent years has been to de-intermediate, leading to the rise of white box professional foundries.Taking servers as an example, Taiwanese manufacturers have a global market share of more than 90% in OEM and white-label brands.And de-intermediation is gradually fermenting on the 5G base station. The affected manufacturers under this wave will be big brand equipment manufacturers such as Nokia, Ericsson, Cisco, HP, Dell, and Huawei.Taiwanese manufacturers have strong technical strength. Although they do not have brand advantages, they will definitely be able to fully cooperate with data center or 5G operators in the process of de-intermediation to create another industrial spring!■ Simplified Chinese ■ EnglishAll pictures and texts on this website belong to Da Rafter Co., Ltd., and all or part of the content may not be reproduced in any form of media without the consent of the company. © DIGITIMES Inc. All rights reserved