Broadcom's 51.2 Tbps co-packaged optics ethernet switch enabling 70% power saving in Gen AI clusters
Date: 15/03/2024
Broadcom is becoming a key part of exponential AI growth in the years of 2023 and 2024, where its high-speed interconnet products are used extensively in today's Gen-AI and such AI server/cloud systems. To address the growing demand of high speed and low power it has announced shipment of its new Bailly, industry’s first 51.2 terabits per sec (Tbps) co-packaged optics (CPO) Ethernet switch. Bailly is made out of eight silicon photonics based 6.4-Tbps optical engines with Broadcom’s best-in-class StrataXGS Tomahawk5 switch chip. Bailly enables the optical interconnect to operate at 70% lower power consumption and delivers an 8x improvement in silicon area efficiency as compared to pluggable transceiver solutions, claims Broadcom.
Broadcom explains "optical interconnect is critical for both front-end and back-end networks in large scale generative AI clusters. Today, pluggable optical transceivers consume approximately 50% of system power and constitute more than 50% of the cost of a traditional switch system. The growing bandwidth requirement for the newer generation of GPUs, coupled with the ever-increasing sizes of AI clusters, requires disruptively power-efficient and cost-efficient optical interconnects that extend beyond discrete solutions. Broadcom’s CPO and silicon photonics technology platform, with its high degree of integration, provides the lowest latency, highest bandwidth density, lowest power, and lowest cost solution to meet this need and can help build large-scale, power-efficient AI clusters."
Bailly packs hundreds of optical components and millions of transistors into a single optical engine, promising significant advancements in power efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and bandwidth density.
Bailly's high degree of integration allows for the consolidation of optical engines with complex logic ASICs on a common substrate. This integration minimizes the need for signal conditioning circuitry, enabling the optical interconnect to operate at 70% lower power consumption compared to traditional pluggable transceivers.
Broadcom collaborates closely with cloud service providers (CSPs) and system integrators to co-design platforms aimed at accelerating the adoption of CPO technologies. The Bailly 51.2T CPO system, showcased at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) 2024 exhibition, exemplifies this collaborative effort.
As the industry rallies behind the adoption of CPO platforms, Bailly sets a new standard for power efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and bandwidth density, driving the future evolution of data center networking.
“As AI clusters demand higher bandwidth density, lower power consumption and lower latency, we are pleased to announce delivery of the industry’s first 51.2-Tbps CPO switch,” said Near Margalit, Ph. D., vice president and general manager of the Optical Systems Division at Broadcom. “Bailly will enable hyperscalers to deploy lower-power, cost-efficient, large-scale AI and compute clusters. Broadcom’s technology leadership and manufacturing innovations help Bailly deliver 70% better power efficiency and ensure an optical I/O roadmap that can walk in tandem with the future bandwidth and power needs of AI infrastructure.”
“Pluggable optics are expected to account for an increasingly significant portion of power consumption at a system level, exceeding 50% of the switch system power at 51.2 Tbps and beyond. This issue will be further exacerbated as Cloud Service Providers build their next-generation AI networks and continue to push for higher speeds,” said Sameh Boujelbene, vice president at Dell’Oro Group. “Substantial investments in AI infrastructure are accelerating the development of innovative optical connectivity solutions such as Broadcom's Bailly co-packaged optics platform, aiming to meet the demands of AI clusters while solving cost and power consumption hurdles.”
“Innovation in the optical interconnect will be of great importance to future generations of AI networks,” said Feng Luo, head of network systems at ByteDance. “Broadcom’s continued progress in the development of co-packaged optics is exactly what the industry will require to overcome cost and power bottlenecks of current generation optical interconnects.”
“System design has become more challenging with each increase in SerDes speed, but only recently have we had to re-design our systems and optics to overcome the physical limitations of copper,” said Richard Li, general manager of H3C’s switch product line. “Our partnership with Broadcom to design systems with highly integrated co-packaged optics is a huge step forward to overcoming the design limitations of pluggable transceivers in high density systems.”
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced a set of challenges that the networking must address,” said Mansour Karam, global vice president (GVP) of data center products at Juniper Networks. “We are excited to partner with Broadcom to deliver co-packaged optics throughout the data center, thereby improving cost, power consumption and bandwidth efficiency of the optical interconnect.”
“System design has become more challenging with the need to meet the requirement of AI/ML and high-performance large-scale datacenter networks,” said Grant Lai, chief technology officer (CTO) of Micas Networks. “Our partnership with Broadcom to design systems with highly integrated co-packaged optics will enable a more power efficient future network. The 51.2 Tbps switch that Micas co-developed with Broadcom will reduce communication latency and power consumption in data centers and unleash more AI power.”
51.2-Tbps CPO Switch Product Highlights:
Broadcom 51.2-Tbps StrataXGS Tomahawk 5 switch silicon
Broadcom 6.4T-FR4 Bailly SCIP optical engines with Broadcom Fiber Connector (BFC) for CPO systems
4RU system design with high-efficiency air cooling to deliver 128 ports of 400G FR4 connectivity externally fiber-coupled with 128 duplex LC optical connectors
CPO engine to front-panel routing supports traditional single-mode fiber
System design compatible to support multiple remote laser modules (RLM) for field replaceability
More than 70% optical interconnect power consumption savings compared to standard pluggable optics solutions
Broadcom to showcase Bailly 51.2T CPO Ethernet switch system and
6.4T optical engine co-packaged with a multi-chip module that includes HBM, logic and PHY at OFC 2024.
Source: Broadcom
