High performance optical datalink array technology

Demands for increased interconnection density and higher bandwidth, coupled with the stringent cost constraints of advanced wide-bandwidth telecommunication switching and high-throughput computer architectures, are exhausting conventional electrical interconnection capabilities. Presently, a bottleneck occurs at the board-to-board level of the interconnection hierarchy. A parallel optical interconnection technique called the one-dimensional optical data link (1D-ODL) is proposed to address this problem. It can be incorporated into system designs beginning at this interconnection level and beyond. The strategic insertion of parallel optical interconnection technology into these electronic processing systems not only meets projected performance requirements, but potentially offers them at a competitive cost