To scale datacenters within racks (scale-up) and across racks (scale-out), the challenge lies in balancing three essential needs: compute, storage, and data movement—all within the practical limits of size, power, cooling, sustainability, and cost. Copper interconnects, once the backbone of data transmission, are increasingly constrained by size and weight, electrical loss, and heat generation.

 

Photonic interconnects provide a powerful alternative by transmitting data with photons instead of electrons.  Thin, lightweight, low-loss optical fibers enable longer links, higher bandwidth density, lower latency, and reduced thermal overhead compared to copper. These advantages increase the available headroom for scaling computing performance, which is vital for both scientific computing and artificial intelligence workloads.

 

This talk will examine the integration of photonic technologies into the datacenter and the emerging era of co-packaged optics, where photonics and electronics are tightly coupled. Emphasis will be placed on the temperature sensitivity of photonic components and the resulting need for thermally aware co-design at the device, package, and system level.