Chips associated with light can train AI fast using low energy

An optical fiber technique can help in communicating with each other at the speed of light, allowing them to transmit 80 times more information as they could use traditional electrical connections. This can significantly speed up the training time required for large artificial intelligence models – from months to weeks – while the cost of energy and emissions for data centers can also reduce.

Most advanced computer chips still communicate using electrical signals made on copper wires. But as the tech industry runs to train large language models and other complex AI systems-a process that requires a network of AI superchips to transfer large amounts of data-comments-lighting of fiber optics light Are eager to link chips using communication.

This technique is not new: Internet already depends on fiber-optic cables extending for thousands of kilometers between continents. To transmit data between nail-shaped chips, however, companies must connect multiple hair-thin optical fibers as possible to the edge of each chip.

“As we all know, the best communication technique is fiber optics, and that is why fiber optics are used everywhere for long distance communication,” Mukesh Khare Preview of technology during a press briefing in IBM Research. “This co-pack optics innovation is originally bringing the power of fiber optics on the chip.”

Khare and his colleagues have developed an optics module that will enable chipmakers to add several optical fibers six times on the edge of a chip compared to current technologies. The module uses a structure called an optical wavegide, which adds 51 optical fibers per millimeter. It also prevents light signals from a fiber to interfere with its neighbors.

“What IBM has actually done here uses all its ingredients and packaging techniques-in that history of leadership in that of how you do high density fiber optics using wavegides, to break through it. For,” Dan Hachisan In Techinsights, a semiconductor tech research firm is headquartered in Canada. “For me, when I saw it it was a big success.”

IBM estimates that by using fiber optics, chips can exchange 80 times more information with a bandwidth, which is 80 times higher than only to communicate with electrical signals. This promotion in communication may be able to train AI developers to train a large language model within three weeks instead of three months, the company says. Switching on optical fiber from electrical wires can also mean a five -fold reduction in the energy cost of training to such AI models.

IBM has already placed the optical module through stress tests including high humidity and temperatures ranging from -40 ° C (-40 ° F) to 125 ° C (257 ° F). Hutchison hopes that major semiconductor building companies may be interested in licensing technology.

“We are really in the early days of all this, but it is the hottest field in semiconductor technology in terms of high-demonstration computing and AI technology,” they say.