Breaking Down the Bottleneck in Modern Data Centers
The growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its corresponding immense compute requirements have supercharged the data center industry. However, it’s not as simple as plugging in another thousand Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). As high-performance computing experts have known for years, it doesn’t matter how fast each node of your supercomputer is if those nodes are idle half the time waiting for data to come in.
The Interconnect Layer: The Key to Unlocking Data Center Potential
The interconnect layer or layers are what turn racks of Central Processing Units (CPUs) and GPUs into effectively one giant machine. This means that the faster the interconnect, the faster the data center. Lightmatter’s photonic interconnect layer is looking like it could be the fastest by a long shot, using the photonic chips they’ve been developing since 2018.
Lightmatter’s CEO Nick Harris: "Hyperscalers Know They Can’t Do It with Traditional Switches"
"Hyperscalers know if they want a computer with a million nodes, they can’t do it with Cisco traditional switches. Once you leave the rack, you go from high-density interconnect to basically a cup on a string," Nick Harris, CEO and founder of Lightmatter, told TechCrunch.
The state of the art is NVLink and particularly the NVL72 platform, which puts 72 Nvidia Blackwell units wired together in a rack, capable of a maximum of 1.4 exaFLOPs at FP4 precision. However, all that compute has to be squeezed out through 7 terabits of "scale up" networking.
The Problem with Traditional Networking: Multiple Steps and Redundancy
"This is not just about speed; it’s also about the number of steps involved in sending data from one point to another," Harris explained. "With traditional networking, you have multiple steps: from the processor to the memory, then to the network interface card (NIC), and then across the network. This introduces latency and redundancy."
Lightmatter’s Photonic Interconnect Layer: A Game-Changer for Data Centers
Lightmatter’s photonic interconnect layer is designed to eliminate these limitations by using light instead of electrical signals to transfer data between nodes. This means that data can be sent at much higher speeds, with lower latency and energy consumption.
Next Steps for Lightmatter: Interconnect and Beyond
In addition to interconnect, the company is developing new substrates for chips so that they can perform even more intimate networking tasks using light. Harris believes that power per chip will be the big differentiator going forward.
"In 10 years, you’ll have wafer-scale chips from everybody – there’s just no other way to improve the performance per chip," he said.
Lightmatter’s Future: A New Era in Data Centers and AI
For Harris, seeing the chip industry coming up against a wall, he plans to be ready and waiting with the next step. "Ten years from now, interconnect is Moore’s Law," he said.
With Lightmatter’s innovative photonic interconnect layer and its focus on developing new substrates for chips, the company is poised to revolutionize the data center industry and unlock the full potential of AI computing.
Related Topics:
- AI: Artificial Intelligence
- Data Centers: Large computer facilities used for storing, processing, and distributing massive amounts of data
- Fundraising: The process of securing investment or funding for a company
- Hardware: Physical components that make up a computer system
- Lightmatter: A photonic computing startup
- Photonics: The technology of generating and manipulating light to perform various tasks
Stay Up-to-Date with the Latest in Tech:
Subscribe to TechCrunch’s Daily News for the latest insights, analysis, and news on the intersection of technology and business. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
