PhoxTroT results to be tested by PhoxLab
Follow-up initiative will characterise embedded photonic interconnect and validate it in data centres
Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM) has announced the successful completion of the EU research project PhoxTroT, 'Photonics for High-Performance, Low-Cost & Low-Energy Data Centers, High Performance Computing Systems: Terabit/s Optical Interconnect Technologies for On-Board, Board-to-Board, Rack-to-Rack data links.
The project was aimed at cutting the energy consumption of data centres. During a period of 56 months, under the coordination of Fraunhofer IZM, the consortium with 23 project partners focused on achieving 50 percent less energy consumption with a doubling of the data communication rate to two terabits per second.
This was achieved by the implementation of optical interconnections at all hierarchy levels: On-Board, Board-to-Board, Rack-to-Rack data links. The overall research and development budget of the project was about €13 million with €8.7 million EU contribution, which allowed an effort of more than 1050 person-months for the duration of the project.
In order to exploit the project main results and technologies a new follow up initiative is now available to small and medium-sized enterprises for further development: PhoxLab for deep characterisation of system embedded photonic interconnect and validation in data centre environment developed into an "˜European Digital Innovation Hub' at the Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin.
Following up on PhoxTroT, the results and applications of further national and European research projects will be provided to start-ups and SMEs - for example, to carry out tests for the certification of their prototypes and developments. Fraunhofer IZM as operator and initiator sees itself as an independent platform for application areas in the field of photonics and data centres of all kinds - and thus lays the foundations for the future of the infrastructure of modern Internet applications.
