Title: Data refinery in the AI era: From silicon processing to optical transport.
Abstract: The data deluge produced by AI traffic, that is increasing by order of magnitude every year, is stressing both electrical and optical interconnect, that are doubling every 2-3 years. Moreover, the energy consumption in the context of exponential growth of traffic is not sustainable. If we continue this trend, the world energy production will be consumed by data. In this talk, a parallel is drawn between energy and data from refinement to transport.
The data centers are the data refineries of the new digital economy and optical fibers are the equivalent of the oil pipelines. An overview of the optical transport technology is presented and how it can be used to reduce cost and loss of transporting energy. Power and cost can be reduced by processing data where the energy is produced and transport lossless bits. Coherent technology for optical systems is at the heart of this efficiency of data transport. This technology is enabled by state- of-the-art 3nm ASICs implementing efficient DSP and high-speed data converters.
Biography: Dr. Naim Ben-Hamida is a senior director of analog ASIC development and Distinguished Engineer at Ciena Corporation. He is responsible for the development of high-speed Serdes and ADC/DACs for optical communication. The latest 3nm IPs delivered by his team enabled the highest performance 1600Gb/s coherent DSP chip for optical modem and the lowest the lowest power 800G ZR chip for coherent pluggable.
He is currently co-supervising PhD and MSA students covering seven research and development projects with six Canadian universities. Dr. Ben-Hamida holds an adjunct professor position with Carleton University. He has published more than 100 international papers and holds more than sixty patents. Prior to Ciena/Nortel, He co-founded Opmaxx Inc, a mixed signal design and test company, where he held a vice president position and led the company to an acquisition. Dr. Ben-Hamida had a PHD and MSA from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Laval university Quebec, Canada