Link technologies in today\u2019s data center networks impose a fundamental trade-off between reach, power, and reliability. Copper links are power-efficient and reliable but have very limited reach (<2 m). Optical links offer longer reach but at the expense of high power consumption and lower reliability. As network speeds increase, this trade-off becomes more pronounced, constraining future scalability.<\/p>\n
We introduce Mosaic, a novel optical link technology that breaks this trade-off. Unlike existing copper and optical links, which rely on a narrow-and-fast architecture with a few high-speed channels, Mosaic adopts a wide-and-slow design, employing hundreds of parallel low-speed channels. To make this approach practical, Mosaic uses directly modulated instead of lasers, combined with multicore imaging fibers, and replaces complex, power-hungry electronics with a low-power analog backend. Mosaic achieves 10\u00d7 the reach of copper, reduces power consumption by up to 68%, and offers 100x higher reliability than today\u2019s optical links. We demonstrate an end-to-end Mosaic prototype with 100 optical channels, each transmitting at 2 Gbps, and show how it scales to 800 Gbps and beyond with a reach of up to 50 m. Mosaic is protocol-agnostic and seamlessly integrates with existing network infrastructure, providing a practical and scalable solution for future networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Link technologies in today\u2019s data center networks impose a fundamental trade-off between reach, power, and reliability. 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