Technology to enable scalable next-gen data centre networks

Many believe that current network technologies within existing data centers have reached their economical scaling limits; they are incapable of supporting the future needs of the data centre market, a sector valued in excess of $10bn.

Engineers at Rockley Photonics are applying integrated solutions in electronics and photonics to get the best out of each technology in a way that will transform the design of future data centres, supporting higher data rates at significantly lower cost and power.

“Major operators tell us that they are on ‘red alert’ when it comes to scaling the network to support their future data centre requirements,” said Andrew Rickman, Chief Executive Officer, Rockley Photonics. “They will need an extraordinary expansion in bandwidth to keep up with demands on the Internet and they need to do it economically and power efficiently. Today, they don’t have a solution for that.

"We have now demonstrated the ability to combine photonics and electronics in a unique architecture, which will enable us to simplify switch design, create vastly more scalable networks using much larger switches and drive down the cost per bit while substantially reducing power consumption.”

Rockley Photonics is now prototyping its architecture using FPGAs and custom photonic devices to prove the concept of scalable optical packet switching in a realistic system environment. Once it has fully evaluated the scalable system architecture, the company will move the design from its prototyping platform to system chips for production purposes. Commercial availability of these products is scheduled in 2017.