At the Globalpress Summit in Santa Cruz, Altera revealed details of its plans to chart a new course to meet the ever-increasing bandwidth requirements as high-definition video, cloud computing and 3D gaming demand more than traditional copper-based interconnects can provide. Altera's Bradley Howe, vice president IC Design outlined the ‘lossy' effects of copper and how high data rates lead to higher losses. The company is using its system interconnect technologies to enable direct optical interfaces in future FPGA packages. It intends to break through the bandwidth and signal integrity barriers inherent in copper technology. For computer and storage-intensive applications such as data centres, the integration of optical interfaces into device packages could replace pluggable optics and reduce power by 70 to 80% while increasing port density and bandwidth by orders of magnitude. In backplane applications in the military, communications infrastructure and broadcast areas, these connections will replace expensive board material and connectors, increase bandwidth and eliminate copper's signal integrity issues. Howe explained how the ability to drive a high-quality optical signal is directly related to the speed and quality of the signal coming from the transceiver at the on-chip electrical-optical interface. The company claims that its transceivers deliver the industry's highest data rates to support the widest range of protocols, while at the same time featuring superior signal integrity. Howe told delegates "These direct optical interfaces have the potential to future-proof backplanes and deliver the bandwidth sought by application and content developers". The optical interconnect programmable logic devices are in R&D at present and will be the size of a standard FPGA for use in backhaul to mobile devices. They will be demonstrated later this year, initially at 11G, expandable to 28G.
