Nubis Communications and Alphawave Semi Showcase First Demonstration of Optical PCI Express 6.0 Technology

Extended link lengths to enhance the scalability of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) clusters

NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. & TORONTO, Ontario – January 31, 2024 – Nubis Communications, Inc., provider of low-latency high-density optical inter-connect (HDI/O), and Alphawave Semi (LN: AWE), a global leader in high-speed connectivity and compute silicon for the world’s technology infrastructure, today announced their upcoming demonstration of PCI Express 6.0 technology driving over an optical link at 64GT/s per lane. Data Center providers are exploring the use of PCIe over Optics to greatly expand the reach and flexibility of the interconnect for memory, CPUs, GPUs, and custom silicon accelerators to enable more scalable and energy-efficient clusters for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (ML/AI) architectures.

Nubis Communications and Alphawave Semi will be showing a live demonstration in the Tektronix booth at DesignCon, the leading conference for advanced chip, board, and system design technologies. An Alphawave Semi PCIe Subsystem with PiCORE Controller IP and PipeCORE PHY will directly drive and receive PCIe 6.0 traffic through a Nubis XT1600 linear optical engine to demonstrate a PCIe 6.0 optical link at 64GT/s per fiber, with optical output waveform measured on a Tektronix sampling scope with a high-speed optical probe.

Optical transmission technology can be leveraged to greatly extend link distances at the same bandwidths compared with copper cables, supporting the larger cluster sizes needed to support ever-larger AI/ML servers distributed over multiple nodes, and enabling innovation in new disaggregated network architectures. The Nubis XT1600 optical engine supports up to 16 lanes of high-density PCIe Gen 6.0 or 100 Gbps/lane Ethernet optical connectivity without incorporating retimers.

“Our high level of integration with 16 lanes full-duplex in a single low-power, low-latency optical engine is a great match to the maximum bandwidth of PCIe x16 for next-generation compute and storage deployments,” said Scott Schube, VP of Marketing at Nubis Communications. “Our demonstration of the Nubis XT1600 linear optical engine and Alphawave Semi’s PCIe 6.0 Controller and PHY IP showcases the viability of a PCIe® 6.0 x8 link over optical fiber at 64 GT/s.”

“AI applications are reshaping data center networks, with hyperscalers deploying increasingly large clusters of disaggregated servers distributed over longer distances. This shift has generated heightened interest in PCIe over Optics among several of our customers,” said Tony Chan Carusone, CTO at Alphawave Semi. “Through our collaboration with Nubis, we’re pleased to demonstrate how we’re leveraging Alphawave Semi’s leadership in connectivity IP and silicon to enable PCIe optical connectivity solutions that accelerate high-performance AI computing and data infrastructure.”

Availability

The Nubis XT1600™ linear optical engine is available now for sampling, please contact via nubis-inc.com.

More on Alphawave Semi’s PCIe Portfolio: Alphawave Semi’s PCI-Express Solution

About Nubis Communications

Nubis innovates across photonics, electronics, packaging, and manufacturing to create optics with significantly better scalability, density, and power efficiency than existing solutions, breaking the I/O wall in data centers and enabling more advanced computing, AI, and machine learning. For more information visit https://www.nubis-inc.com.

XT-1600, HDI/O, and the Nubis Cloud Logo are trademarks of Nubis Communications.

About Alphawave Semi

Alphawave Semi is a global leader in high-speed connectivity and compute silicon for the world’s technology infrastructure. Faced with the exponential growth of data, Alphawave Semi’s technology services a critical need: enabling data to travel faster, more reliably and with higher performance at lower power. We are a vertically integrated semiconductor company, and our IP, custom silicon, and connectivity products are deployed by global tier-one customers in data centers, compute, networking, AI, 5G, autonomous vehicles, and storage. Founded in 2017 by an expert technical team with a proven track record in licensing semiconductor IP, our mission is to accelerate the critical data infrastructure at the heart of our digital world. To find out more about Alphawave Semi, visit: awavesemi.com.