APIC Corporation, based in Culver City, California, has been awarded a subcontract sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, New York, to develop a prototype of a high-speed, energy-efficient photonic integrated circuit (PIC) for computer systems called Heterogeneously Integrated Photonics and Electronics (HIP-E). The HIP-E prototyping effort is a partnership between APIC Corp., AFRL, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the home of Frontier, currently the world’s fastest supercomputer.
The contract is the first step in designing a manufacturable PIC, which will greatly improve chip-to-chip communications in terms of bandwidth and energy efficiency. Ultimately, HIP-E technology will connect all processors and memory with a fiber optical mesh network, reducing energy consumed by data centers, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence computing systems by 95%.
The contract and partnership with AFRL and ORNL mark a transition from research and development, where $150 million was invested over 20 years, to now, the development of manufacturable prototype computing systems. Dr. Raj Dutt, CEO of APIC Corporation, stated, “HIP-E is a transformative technology, decades in the making, similar to the tectonic shift from vacuum tube to solid-state electronics. The impacts and benefits of HIP-E are far-reaching and are truly a technology that is a legacy for mankind.”