AI Ambition Is Pushing Copper To Its Breaking Point
The Register, Thursday, November 28th, 2024
Ayar Labs contends silicon photonics will be key to scaling beyond the rack and taming the heat
Datacenters have been trending toward denser, more power-hungry systems for years. In case you missed it, 19-inch racks are now pushing power demands beyond 120 kilowatts in high-density configurations, with many making the switch to direct liquid cooling to tame the heat.
Much of this trend has been driven by a need to support ever larger AI models. According to researchers at Fujitsu, the number of parameters in AI systems is growing 32-fold approximately every three years. To support these models, chip designers like Nvidia use extremely high-speed interconnects - on the order of 1.8 terabytes a second - to make eight or more GPUs look and behave like a single device.