High-bandwidth, chip-based optical interconnects on waveguide-integrated SLC for optical off-chip I/O

As computing systems evolve for high performance with high power efficiency and exploit multi-core architecture, requirements for high-speed I/O are getting harder and could not be satisfied with optical interconnects. In addition to realize low power with optics by utilizing CMOS technology for high-sped driver circuits, chip-level packaging of optical integration are crucial to implement high-density optical channels, which are one of the requirements for the multi-core systems. Waveguide-integrated surface laminar circuit (SLC) have been developed for the chip-based, high-density optical interconnects. The power budget of optical link based on the chip-based optical interconnects are analyzed, since the budget affects the power dissipation of the link, and the fabrication process of the waveguides-integrated SLC is optimized to reduce the loss. This technology is then exploited into optical off-chip I/O for logic ICs, i.e. FPGA in this paper.