Computer optical interconnects

Summary form only given. The use of photonics to meet the demands on interconnect technology, posed by the growing complexity of chips, boards, backplanes, and computing machines is addressed. In the field of optical interconnects, the distances involved are so short that attenuation and dispersion may not be the dominant phenomena, and other properties of lightwave signals come into play. Of great importance is the freedom of adjacent optical channels from crosstalk at even extremely high data rates. In some cases it can be shown that optical interconnect solutions will require less communication power than electrical solutions. Optical interconnects are now being experimented with at various levels of the interconnect hierarchy.<>