(Image credit: Joel Hallberg / University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Researchers have built a prototype that paves the way for enabling light-powered processor caches that can run at up to 60 GHz in the future, or roughly 20 times faster than some modern processor caches. The functional regenerative "photonic memory latch," fabricated on the commercially available GlobalFoundries’ 300mm Fotonix photonics platform, is designed as an optical counterpart to a standard SRAM bit, and the team positions it as a missing component for fully photonic processors. However, further density improvements will be needed before the tech can be fully integrated into optical processors.
The prototype addresses two bottlen…
(Image credit: Joel Hallberg / University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Researchers have built a prototype that paves the way for enabling light-powered processor caches that can run at up to 60 GHz in the future, or roughly 20 times faster than some modern processor caches. The functional regenerative "photonic memory latch," fabricated on the commercially available GlobalFoundries’ 300mm Fotonix photonics platform, is designed as an optical counterpart to a standard SRAM bit, and the team positions it as a missing component for fully photonic processors. However, further density improvements will be needed before the tech can be fully integrated into optical processors.
The prototype addresses two bottlenecks that plague modern high-performance systems — interconnect delay and the cost of repeatedly converting information between light and electricity.
The UW-Madison study describes the performance the team expects from the design, namely write speeds approaching 20 GHz, while modeled read speeds reach 50-60 GHz. Those figures sit well above the clock rates of electronic SRAMs used in today’s CPUs and accelerators, which usually top out at 2-3 GHz.
The decision to fabricate the latch on GlobalFoundries’ Fotonix platform means that the technology can be replicated and scaled more easily than if it relied on specialized materials or custom fabrication steps, as is often the case in optical memory research.
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Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.