With the ever-expanding bandwidth demands of applications such as high-definition (HD) video, cloud computing, and 3D gaming, relying on traditional copper-based interconnects could impede innovation. To eliminate chip-to-chip and chip-to-backplane bandwidth bottlenecks, Altera today announced plans for optically interconnected programmable devices, leveraging its knowledge base in transceivers and system interconnect technologies to do so.
According to Altera, for computer and storage-intensive applications such as data centers, the integration of optical interfaces into device packages could replace pluggable optics and reduce power by 70 percent to 80 percent while increasing port density and bandwidth by orders of magnitude. In backplane applications in the military, communications infrastructure and broadcast areas, these connections will replace expensive board material and connectors, increase bandwidth significantly and eliminate the signal integrity issues associated with using copper-based solutions.