Optical IO Technology for Tera-Scale Computing

Abstract

This paper describes both a near term and a long term optical interconnect solution, the first based on a packaging architecture and the second based on a monolithic photonic CMOS architecture. The packaging-based optical I/O architec- ture implemented with 90 nm CMOS transceiver circuits, 1 12 VCSEL/detector arrays and polymer waveguides achieves 10 Gb/s/channel at 11 pJ/b. A simple TX pre-emphasis technique enables a potential 18 Gb/s at 9.6 pJ/b link efficiency. Analysis predicts this architect