PACIFIC MICROCHIP CORP. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 22c

Description

The large-scale detectors that are used in nuclear physics (NP) experiments undergo upgrades leading to increasingly high-density readout electronics, producing extremely large amounts of data. For example, the 12GeV luminosity upgrade related GlueX Program at Jefferson Lab Hall-D projects raw data volume to reach 2300TB/s in 2018. To accommodate the transmission of the increasingly high data volumes within the NP detector facilities, additional or new optic fiber has to be deployed, which in turn leads to additional effort and cost. Pacific Microchip Corp. proposes to develop a 100Gb/s transceiver ASIC, which will be collecting ten data streams at up to 10Gb/s (the usual data rate within the NP facilities), serializing them to the standard 100Gb/s data format and transmitting using already existing fiber. As a result, the data throughput will be increased by an order circumventing the effort, hassle and cost associated with replacing the fiber optic media. In Phase I, the novel ASIC’s architecture will be developed and modeled, the critical circuits will be designed and the proof of the concept based on computer simulations will be provided. Phase II will result in the fabricated and tested prototype of the ASIC and the data link being prepared for commercialization in Phase III. This project will develop a 100Gbps transceiver ASIC for upgrading 10Gb/s fiber optic links to 100Gb/s without upgrading the optic fiber. The transceiver ASIC will facilitate 10 times increase of the data throughput within NP facilities such as the Jefferson Lab Hall-D without re-deploying the optic fiber. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: In addition to the primary application of the proposed transceiver ASIC for increase of data throughput in NP detector facilities such as the Jefferson Lab Hall-D, the proposed 100Gbps transceiver has a huge market in 100GbE and 400GbE transceiver modules and line cards for data transmission over long and short hole fiber optic networks. Since the proposed ASIC needs a single wavelength and single polarization mode and it does not require optic fiber upgrade to transmit at 100Gb/s, we expect a huge demand for the ASIC and commercialization success.