Nubis Communications and Alphawave Semi have teamed up to showcase a PCIe 6.0 interconnection using an optical link. The demonstration used Alphawave's PCIe 6.0 controller and a Nubis linear optical engine, primarily meant to showcase ability of the companies to enable next-generation data center connectivity at 64 GT/s.
The demonstration features an Alphawave Semi PCIe subsystem based on the PiCORE Controller IP and PipeCORE PHY that drives and receives PCIe 6.0 traffic through a Nubis XT1600 linear optical engine. This setup achieves PCIe 6.0 x8 optical link at 64 GT/s per fiber, without retimers. The demonstration showcases the technical viability and high-speed capabilities of this custom PCIe over Optics solution.
"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."
Sampling for the Nubis XT1600 linear optical engine has started and interested parties can contact the company. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the solution by Nubis and Alphawave is a custom solution that has nothing to do with PCI-SIG's optical PCIe initiative.
