Fujitsu and Socionext today announced that they have developed the world’s lowest power-consuming transceiver circuit that achieves communications speeds of 56 Gbps per channel. Compared to previous levels, this essentially doubles the speed of data transfers between semiconductor chips, used in servers and switches, and optical modules. Fujitsu and Socionext developed a new timing detection method that combines the functions of the circuit that compensates signal degradation that becomes prominent as communication speeds improve with some of the functions of the timing-detection circuit that determines the bit-value of input signals, reducing the number of circuits.
There is an increasing need to accelerate data transfers between servers in response to improvements in the processing performance of datacenters; however, at the same time, limitations on the amount of electricity that facilities can supply mean that there is also a demand to lower electricity consumption. This technology is able to increase the speed of data transfers between chips and optical modules without increasing power consumption, so it is expected to lead to performance improvements in next-generation servers and switches.