Technology Summary
Data centers are huge, industrial-sized buildings that house hundreds of thousands of servers and related technologies that allow Internet traffic to flow uninterrupted.
Although Google, Facebook, Cisco, Amazon, and a few other large companies are building and maintaining their own data centers and addressing energy issues internally, thousands of other data centers are in use and/or being built that demand enormous amounts of energy both to operate and to cool the ‘farm’ because of the tremendous heat servers generate.
Research indicates that unceasing Internet growth is straining the resources and architectures of existing commercial data centers as well as data centers for government, education, and medical institutions. The Internet of Things (IoT), social media, videos, smart phones, and other Internet-dependent devices are all increasing demand on our current data center and server farm infrastructure. As traffic increases, so does the need for increased energy & speed.
In addition, some routes may seldom be used while others over-used. Over-provisioning also introduces greater energy consumption. Our High-speed Optical Switches remove the need to over-provision.
Data centers require enormous amounts of energy to operate, largely to keep their technology cool. Research published as recently as a June 2016 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the United States Department of Energy shows that
“In 2014, data centers in the U.S. consumed an estimated 70 billion kWh, representing about 1.8% of total U.S. electricity consumption.” [1]
Post-Quantum Tek intends to commercialize a unique, top-of-rack technology developed by the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences: a high-speed optical switch that is cooler … and faster … than switch technology in use today. This optical switch dramatically reduces energy usage, increases data throughput, and enables increased security options.
As demonstrated by the UA’s College of Optical Sciences:
Post-Quantum Tek will leverage the work and research conducted by the UA’s College of Optical Sciences into two commercializing phases:
PHASE I
PROTOTYPE
Phase I develops a prototype and a commercially viable product based on the latest available MEMS chip.
PHASE II
Execute Vision
Phase II installs the switch in an operational data center to demonstrate its efficacy.
How the High-speed Optical Switch Works
Our High-speed Optical Switch uses the diffraction of the light to redirect the data. Light travels to the server via fiber optic cable and then is redirected to the appropriate receiver using diffraction within the switch. Since this configuration uses only light, and not electronics, it increases throughput speed and reduces power consumption (and heat) considerably.
To be ‘safe,’ data centers often over-provision their servers, that is, they try to connect all switches to each other so data will always have a wired route to its destination. That ‘safety’ means data may have to hop from switch to switch to switch to travel from its source to its destination, which introduces latency and more heat-generating energy. By accomodating a large number of ports, our High-speed Optical Switch minimizes the need to “over-provision.”
Our High-speed Optical Switch is agile and can be reconfigured to send data to any port as needed in microseconds.
And, it’s much cooler.
Commercialization of the High-speed Optical Switch
Post-Quantum Tek is a recently incorporated company that sees the opportunity this new technology introduces to the data center industry and intends to commercialize its high-speed Optical Switch. Working closely with researchers at the UA’s College of Optical Sciences, Post-Quantum Tek proposes a two-phase approach based on the chip-technology that is currently becoming available from UC Berkeley.
Post-Quantum Tek will partner with a technology development and prototyping company in Tucson, AZ to build a prototype. This prototype of the high-speed Optical Switch will readily demonstrate the efficacy of the optical switch to the industry.
Post-prototype and during its development, the commercial high-speed optical switch will be hardened, if needed integrating security features into the switch package. At this point in time, Post-Quantum Tek is planning to use a Helion Optical Networking security solution. The optical switch is driven by an FPGA board and Helion provides an FPGA-based security solution.
In Summary
The High-speed Optical Switch is a new and disruptive technology that has tremendous potential for data center clients in reducing energy-related costs and increasing speed and agility.
According to a report published by MarketsandMarkets™ in January 2018, the data center switch market is worth almost USD$14 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to just more than USD $17 billion by 2023. With the data center switch market anticipated to have a very robust compound aggregate growth rate (CAGR) of 4.92%, [2] we believe there is a strong market for this technology.
Post-Quantum Tek recognizes there are many other players in the data center switch arena, notably Cisco, Juniper, and Arista. No doubt these companies, and others, are constantly searching for viable solutions to the energy demands and need for speed in data centers. However, we believe our cool High-speed Switch Technology, based on the important theoretical and successfully applied research work performed by the UA’s College of Optical Sciences, sets us apart. We stand ready to commercialize our cool High-speed Switch Technology and bring it to market.
Notes:
[1] United States Data Center Energy Usage Report https://eta.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/lbnl-1005775_v2.pdf
[2] Data Center Switch Market Worth 17.69 Billion USD by 2023 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/data-center-switch-market-worth-1769-billion-usd-by-2023-668020873.html