2-D Parallel Optoelectronic Interconnect Using a Highly Light Sensitive Monolithic Receiver Array

Abstract

Optical interconnects are already well established in the field of long distance communication. In this paper we present a board-to-board interconnect system. The interconnect distance is in the range of some centimeters to some meters. We present an optoelectronic interconnect comprising a 2-D emitter array, a fibre bundle and a monolithic custom-designed receiver array (opto-ASIC) for application as a link between CPUs and shared memories within a multiprocessor system. Each channel has a data rate of 10 MBit/s (similar to the system clock rate), which yields with, 128 parallel channels, an overall data throughput of more than 1 GBit/s.