IARPA to hold Proposers’ Day for SuperCables

On October 24, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity announced a Proposers’ Day for its SuperCables program, ahead of a planned solicitation. The event will take place on November 7, and attendees must register no later 5:00 p.m. EST on October 31.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will host a Proposers’ Day Conference for the SuperCables program on November 7, 2017 in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation. The Conference will be held from 8 AM to 4 PM EST in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The purpose of the conference will be to provide information on SuperCables and the research problems the program aims to address, to address questions from potential proposers, and to provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities for teaming opportunities.

This announcement serves as a pre-solicitation notice and is issued solely for information and planning purposes.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION AND GOALS

The goal of SuperCables will be to develop technologies that will enable energy-efficient high-data-rate interconnect between a superconducting data processor at 4 kelvins and a room temperature control system. The SuperCables program is primarily interested in components for the data egress system. A possible later program will also consider data ingress, and will integrate components into a complete data transmission system.

The superconducting system represents digital zeros and ones by either the absence or presence of a single flux quantum (SFQ). SFQ circuits produce voltage pulses that are about 1 mV tall and 2 picoseconds wide. The ideal data egress system would require dissipation of no more than a few tens of attojoules in the 4 kelvins environment to convert the SFQ information into a form that can be transmitted to room temperature. The data ingress system should have comparable efficiency. IARPA is most interested in systems that can be scaled to beyond petabits per second.

A possible solution will have photonic components at 4 kelvins coupled to optical fiber running to room temperature, but IARPA will consider other approaches. The SuperCables program is expected to run for two years and to address the following tasks:

• A pulse conditioner that takes SFQ input and produces output suitable for driving a range of photonic devices
• A channel bonding technique
• Energy-efficient high-data-rate electro-optic modulator
• Other possible egress devices

IARPA anticipates one or more single-site awards for each of these tasks, but does not preclude some level of teaming, or a proposer working on more than one of these tasks.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps