Active Optical Cable transceiver packaging trends and die bonding case studies

The data bandwidth within data server farms continues to grow faster than network user data bandwidth. Applications such as those for consumer shopping require many queries and searches inside a data farm to assemble and compile data before being presented to a user in a simple natural way for making purchasing decisions. Data farms currently use high speed active optical cables within the data farm to connect servers. Two basic configurations will be discussed in this paper. These technologies use either "Edge Emitting Laser (EEL) + Single-Mode Fiber" or "Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) +Multi-Mode Fiber". Both EEL and VCSEL technologies will be studied from a packaging architectural view with case studies showing high accuracy pick and place of the laser die, photo detector, and lens attachments. Example cases are presented to show the challenges and solutions to high accuracy die attach active optical cables. The paper is applicable to process engineers and managers who currently or plan to assemble Active Optical Cable transceivers or other similar packages using high accuracy pick and place systems.