About the talk: The industry is approaching practical scaling limits of electrical I/O performance. While I/O bandwidth demand for compute continues to increase, electrical I/O power-performance scaling is slowing. Optical I/O has the potential to outperform electrical I/O in key performance metrics of reach, bandwidth density, power consumption and latency. In this talk, we will highlight key technology requirements to make the transition from electrical to optical. The design and measurements of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) prototypes will be presented. We will also outline a technology path for future optical I/O bandwidth scaling.

Bio: James Jaussi is a Senior Principal Engineer and director of the PHY Research Lab in Intel Labs at Intel Corporation. He leads research in I/O design, architecture and systems to enable bandwidth and performance scaling of high-value silicon. Research areas include electrical and optical I/O circuits, photonic devices and systems, prototype characterization and test methods, and link system modeling and analysis tools and methodologies.

James joined Intel in 2001 as an I/O circuit researcher after receiving his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He has contributed to industry I/O standards including PCIe, MIPI M-PHY and USB. Two of his primary technical focus areas were clocking architectures and link modeling. Between 2012 and 2015, he led the MIPI M-PHY sub-group. He received the 2015 MIPI Distinguished Service Award and the 2021 JSSC Best Paper Award. He was recognized for his contributions to USB Type-C with a 2016 Intel Achievement Award.