英特尔想靠Omni-Path独霸数据中心几无可能？

ports of the InfiniBand and Omni-Path switches are electrical, not optical. If the cable only has to reach a few meters, it can be made out of copper wires. For longer distances, the QSFP28 connector will contain a fiber optic transceiver that converts the electrical signals into optical signals.

But what about Intel's much vaunted silicon photonics? Intel silicon photonics offers the potential to put optical interfaces directly on the processor chip, circumventing the electrical interfaces such as the QSFP28 connector. But this technology is nowhere to be found in any Intel Omni-Path offering. Instead, servers connect to the switch fabric with humdrum PCIE interface cards such as these shown at Supercomputing '15, which once again use the QSFP28 connector.

Intel has done some interesting work in silicon photonics, which involves integrating the optical laser for fiber communication directly onto the silicon die of the processor. There would be electrical power advantages in a fiber-to-the-processor approach. But I question whether it will ever be practical or cost effective.

Putting the lasers on the silicon is technically difficult in itself and will always be a cost delta compared to normal processor fabrication. Also, there's the problem of connecting the fiber output of the processor to the rest of the data center. The fibers would have to be "connectorized" at a patch panel so that the data center operator could have flexibility in making and breaking cable connections.

This actually turns out to be challenging, which is why the industry opted for the QSFP28 electrical connector instead. You can make and break electrical connectors like the QSFP28 a large number of times without signal degradation. Optical connectors are much more delicate and not nearly as reliable.

Investor Takeaway

Intel's silicon photonics research, as interesting as it is, has served as a kind of stalking horse to mask what is really a much more conventional move into data center networking. Here, Intel's push into the data center is reminiscent of its acquisition of Infineon and subsequent push into wireless modems. In 2012, Intel acquired QLogic's (NASDAQ:QLGC) InfiniBand business and the Aries Interconnect team of Cray (NASDAQ:CRAY). The merging of these organizations and intellectual property serves as the basis of Omni-Path.

Intel claims that the optical connection will migrate ever closer to the processor, but that may or may not happen. Its silicon photonics work may never provide the competitive discriminator assumed by Intel's supporters. In the meantime, INTC is left with trying to enter a market against a powerful incumbent, Mellanox. Intel is, in effect, trying to set up a proprietary network fabric product line in competition with an industry standard. Whether the data center industry will adopt Intel's proprietary standard is debatable.

Intel's Omni-Path, as currently implemented (and probably implemented for the next five years), would not preclude the use of competing processor technology based on ARM Holdings (NASDAQ:ARMH). Any system that provides a PCIE interface will be able to employ Intel Omni-Path. Far from being a lock on the data center, Omni-Path could be a high-risk venture with little real return. The conservatism of data centers that works so well in Intel's favor in processor technology works against it in network fabrics. Based on the long-term challenge faced by Intel's x86 architecture in PCs and the data center, I consider INTC a sell.