MicroLED-based optical interconnects are getting a lot of attention lately, as AI datacenters demands drive innovation and funds into the optical interconnect market.
According to TrendForce, microLED-based optical interconnect solutions are drastically more power efficient compared to copper-base solutions - in fact the overall microLED I/O system power consumption can be reduced to around 5% of the consumption of copper based systems.
TrendForce says that the market is driving towards increased interconnect bandwidth, towards 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps, and copper-based solutions are under pressure to achieve these high rates without increase power consumption too much.
In 1.6 Tbps optical communication products, current copper-based optical transceiver modules consume approximately 30W of power, while a microLED solution could potentially lower that to around 1.6W.
MicroLED-based interconnects are still at an early stage, but in recent months we have seen interesting announcements from supply chain companies, including Avicena, Ennostar, Credo/Hyperlume, CEA-Leti, PlayNitride, MediaTek and others.
