KR-20260068043-A - Low-Power Optical Communication-Based Data Transmission Method

Abstract

The present invention provides a data transmission method that reduces power consumption and heat generation per unit time of an optical communication module (300) by reducing a transmission data packet through real-time lossless compression by a hardware compression logic (210) in an optical communication-based processor (100)-memory (700) interconnect environment including a CXL controller (200) and an optical communication module (300), and converting the reduced packet into an optical signal for transmission. The present invention discloses a multilayer heat suppression mechanism comprising temperature feedback closed-loop control, multi-stage compression level adjustment, power budget-based transmission hold, entropy-based dual-path processing, selection of heterogeneous algorithms in CXL FLIT units, dynamic reduction of WDM channels and laser extinguishing, insertion of residual symbol slot idles, CXL.mem metadata mapping, dictionary dictionary construction, even distribution of multi-path thermal load, and a package structure with a thermal barrier interposed therein.

Inventors

• 안범주

Assignees

• 안범주

Dates

Publication Date

20260513

Application Date

20260426

Claims (1)

1. In a data transmission method for suppressing heat generation between a processor and a memory device connected via optical communication, (a) A step in which the CXL controller receives data to be transmitted from the processor; (b) A step in which the hardware compression logic analyzes the data in real time and reduces the size of the transmitted data packet by performing lossless compression; (c) a step of reducing power consumption and heat generation per unit time of the optical communication module by converting the above-mentioned reduced data packet into an optical signal and transmitting it; and (d) a receiving controller receiving the optical signal and performing real-time decompression at the hardware level, comprising Low-power optical communication-based data transmission method.

Description

Low-Power Optical Communication-Based Data Transmission Method The present invention relates to a method for transmitting data between a processor and a memory device, and more specifically, to a low-power optical communication-based data transmission method that reduces the power consumption and heat generation per unit time of an optical communication module by reducing the size of a transmitted data packet through real-time lossless compression by hardware compression logic in a high-speed data transmission environment using a CXL (Compute Express Link) controller and an optical communication module, and converting the data into an optical signal for transmission. In modern high-performance data centers and artificial intelligence computing infrastructures, data transfer bandwidth and latency requirements between processors (100) and memory devices (700) are rapidly increasing. Conventional DDR-based electrical signal interfaces face difficulties in meeting the required bandwidth due to signal attenuation in physical wiring, impedance matching limitations, and pin count constraints. In particular, in memory-intensive workloads such as large-scale language model inference, graphics processing, and scientific simulations, the so-called memory wall phenomenon is prominent, where memory access latency acts as a bottleneck in overall system performance. To resolve these issues, the CXL Consortium, led by Intel and including major semiconductor and system companies, developed CXL (Compute Express Link), a cache coherent interconnect standard based on the PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) physical layer. The CXL standard supports high-performance communication between a processor (100), an accelerator, and a memory expansion device by dynamically multiplexing three subprotocols—CXL.io, CXL.cache, and CXL.mem—on a single link. Since CXL 3.0, the PCIe 6.0 physical layer based on PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation 4) coding has been adopted, increasing the transmission speed to 64 GT/s, and CXL 4.0 extends this to 128 GT/s. However, electrical signal-based CXL interconnects harbor a fundamental problem of generating a large amount of heat during high-speed transmission. When data is transmitted via electrical wiring, Joule heat is generated as current passes through conductor resistance, and significant power is consumed during the signal conversion process. As the amount of data transmitted increases, the number of bits transmitted per unit time rises, and power consumption and heat generation tend to increase linearly in proportion. This generated heat raises the operating temperature of surrounding semiconductor devices, causing performance degradation such as reduced electron mobility, increased leakage current, and degraded signal integrity; in severe cases, this can shorten the lifespan of the devices or lead to thermal runaway. To overcome the limitations of such electrical-based interconnects, optical communication-based interconnect technology is attracting attention. In optical communication methods, data is converted into the form of photons and transmitted through optical fibers or optical waveguides; therefore, compared to electrical signal methods, signal attenuation per unit distance is extremely low, it is independent of electromagnetic interference (EMI), and theoretically provides a very high bandwidth. However, even when applying optical communication methods to CXL interconnects, active optical components such as the E/O (Electro-Optical) conversion element (310), laser light source (311), and modulation element (312) still consume significant power and generate heat during operation. This heat generation in the optical communication module (300) causes changes in the refractive index of the optical components, phase drift, and polarization mode dispersion, thereby degrading the quality of the optical signal and imposing an additional burden on the design of the cooling system. Meanwhile, there have been attempts to combine hardware-accelerated compression technology with CXL interconnects for the purpose of expanding memory capacity. However, this conventional approach focuses entirely on the goal of virtual expansion of memory capacity, that is, an increase in effective memory capacity relative to physical memory capacity. Furthermore, the technical connection that packet size reduction through compression reduces the number of driving cycles of the E/O conversion element (310) of the optical communication module (300), thereby directly reducing the power consumption and heat generation per unit time of the optical communication module (300) itself, has not been taught or suggested in the prior art. Additionally, active heat suppression mechanisms, such as a closed-loop thermal control structure that feeds the temperature of the optical communication module (300) to the compression strength of the hardware compression logic (210), dual-path processing based on data entropy, and