Rockley Photonics and the University of Southampton: A Prosperity Partnership

罗克利光子学和南安普顿大学：繁荣的伙伴关系

基本信息

批准号：
EP/R003076/1
负责人：
Graham Reed
金额：
$ 282.9万
依托单位：
University of Southampton
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2017
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2017 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FR003076%2F1
关键词：
Rockley Photonics University Southampton Prosperity

项目摘要

According to the Cisco's 2016 Global Cloud Index, hyperscale data centers will grow from 259 in number at the end of 2015 to 485 by 2020 and will represent 47 percent of all installed data center servers by 2020. This extraordinary growth prediction will exasperate an industry already struggling to cope with the costs and power requirements of existing IT infrastructure technology. Rockley Photonics is developing a highly scalable optical fibre networking and packet switch solution for cloud datacenters. The heart of the solution will be the company's TopangaTM optical fiber interfaced packet switch application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). With the TopangaTM ASIC, one can network up to hundreds of thousands of servers together in cloud datacenters at a fraction of the current capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expenditure (OPEX - mainly power), achieving greatly superior server utilization and lower communication latency required for emerging virtual reality and machine learning applications. Rockley Photonics TopangaTM for the first time in the industry uses silicon photonics chips incorporating wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) integrated with the switch ASIC to directly bring high bandwidths of data on and off the ASIC. These chips use micro-scale silicon photonic opto-electronic elements (e.g. modulators) to perform the electrical-to-opical conversions with new levels of compactness and high densities pitch-matched to the ASICs to reduce electrical connection length almost to zero.This proposed Prosperity Partnership brings together the UK's premier industry and academic partners in the field of Silicon Photonics, Rockley Photonics and The Silicon Photonics Group at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton. The management team at Rockley have already been involved in 2 Silicon Photonics start-up companies and now Rockley Photonics is pioneering the 3rd generation of this emerging technology. The ORC team have demonstrated numerous world firsts in the field, and are known around the globe as a pioneering team in the field of Silicon Photonics. Together these teams will form a formidable Prosperity Partnership that will work together to transform the way in which data centre architectures handle vast quantities of data by developing novel photonic solutions to the modulation and distribution of optical signals, and the overall switching architectures. We anticipate significant impact from the funding, should we be successful.The Silicon Photonics Group at the University of Southampton are well known internationally for pioneering work in the field since 1989. In 2012 the group moved to Southampton University where the head count has since grown by a factor of x3 to more than 40 researchers in total. Not only do the group have a large number of key collaborators within the Southampton environment, but also play a key role in running and using the clean room complex, putting them in a unique position worldwide in having design, fabrication, prototyping and testing facilities/expertise. The investment of more than £120 Million in the cleanroom complex has recently been enhanced by a £3million EPSRC investment in a photolithography scanning capability which enables fast prototyping, ideal for facilitating disruptive optical device and optical circuit research.Together the combined teams will develop the devices and photonic circuits necessary for future generations of Rockley Photonics products.

根据思科2016年的2016年全球云指数，超尺度数据中心将从2015年底的259个增长到到2020年的485个，到2020年，所有已安装的数据中心服务器的47％都将增长。这一非凡的增长预测将使已经难以应对现有IT基金构建技术的成本和电力要求。 Rockley Photonics正在为云数据中心开发高度可扩展的光纤网络和数据包开关解决方案。解决方案的核心将是公司的Topangatm光纤交换数据包开关应用程序特定集成电路（ASIC）。借助Topangatm ASIC，可以在当前资本支出（CAPEX）和运营支出（OPEX-主要是电源）的一小部分中在云数据中心进行多达数十万台服务器的网络，从而实现了出色的高级服务器利用率，并获得了出现的较低的沟通延迟，而较低的通信延迟则是新兴的虚拟现实和机器学习应用程序。 Rockley Photonics Topangatm首次使用与开关ASIC集成的波长式多路复用（WDM）的硅光子芯片，以直接在ASIC上和ASIC中直接带来高带宽数据。这些芯片使用微尺度硅光子光电元件（例如调制器）执行电气转换，并具有新水平的紧凑性和高密度与ASIC的高度匹配，以减少电气连接的长度，以将几乎零的电连接长度降低到零。南安普敦大学光电研究中心（ORC）的光子小组。 Rockley的管理团队已经参与了2家硅光子初创公司，现在Rockley Photonics开创了这项新兴技术的第三代。兽人团队在该领域展示了许多世界第一，并且在全球范围内被称为硅光子学领域的开创性团队。这些团队将共同形成一个巨大的繁荣伙伴关系，将共同努力，通过开发新的光子解决方案来转变数据中心架构处理大量数据的方式，以调制和分布光学信号和整体切换体系结构。如果我们取得成功，我们预计资金会产生重大影响。南安普敦大学的硅光子学集团自1989年以来就以该领域的开创性工作而闻名。2012年，该小组搬到了南安普敦大学，此后，此后，头部数量自来就已经成长为X3，总数为40多个研究人员。该小组不仅在南安普敦环境中都有大量关键的合作者，而且在运行和使用清洁室综合体方面发挥了关键作用，使他们在全球拥有设计，制造，原型化和测试设施/专业知识方面处于独特的位置。最近在光刻扫描能力上进行了300万英镑的EPSRC投资，在洁净室建筑群中投资超过1.2亿英镑，这是可实现快速原型制作的投资，非常适合促进颠覆性的光学电路和光学电路研究。合并的团队将开发出摇滚乐产品的产品和光电环境产品所需的成果。