TORONTO — IBM has developed new technology that it says will make data centres as fast as light and much more efficient by multiplying links in the hardware that fills them.

The prototype system, a joint production between engineers in the U.S. and Canada, connects chips together using polymer fibres and a new kind of controller. IBM says the device significantly boosts the speed and quantity of data moving through data centres, which could be a boon for the AI industry. The new technology could allow developers to train large language models five times quicker than existing systems, said Mukesh Khare, IBM’s general manager of semiconductors.

By tackling the “communication bottleneck” he said, the chips “can talk to each other much faster, and that can really save us power.”

IBM engineers developed the new co-packaged optics component at its semiconductor research lab in Albany, N.Y., then figured out how to build it at the firm’s facility across the border in Bromont, Que. 

The firm developed special materials including glues for the device so it could pass stress and temperature tests, said John Knickerbocker, a distinguished engineer at the company. “It’s ready, from a technology perspective, to be scaled into manufacturing.”

As part of the production process, the device will be bundled with the chips clients are using. IBM’s Bromont plant will do some manufacturing, while the company will also license the technology to customers that want to build their own versions. 

Other firms, including Ottawa-based Ranovus, already sell co-packaged optics systems for AI data centres. But IBM’s new technology can fit six times as many connectors on the edge of a chip as any competitor by using polymer rather than wider glass fibres, claimed Knickerbocker.

Telecommunications companies and data-centre operators already use fibre optics to carry data  over long distances. IBM’s new device brings that technology down to the semiconductor level, Khare said. While hardware giants have churned out ever-faster processors, “the communication on how these chips can talk to each other is not keeping up.” 

The new device could be a test case for policymakers’ efforts to build an integrated semiconductor cluster in the continent’s northeast. In April, the Liberal government awarded IBM $59.9 million for a $226.5-million project to expand its Bromont facility and do R&D there. Across the border, the Biden administration has pledged US$825 million under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act for a new R&D facility in Albany.