Reconfigurable optoelectronic interconnects for VLSI circuits based on fibre arrays

The aim of the presented work is to realise optical interconnects based on two-dimensional (2D) fibre arrays for the board-to-board area in order to overcome bandwidth problems caused by planar bus structures in computing systems. Due to arising mechanical, optical and thermal problems in board-to-board area free space optical interconnects are not recommendable. Therefore fibre-based connections are a good choice because the connection is relative flexible, secure against interspersing light and stable in temperature. In the paper we present a parallel optoelectronic demonstration system which is based on VCSELs, an 8×8 fibre array with a pitch of 250 μm and an appropriate smart CMOS detector array operating as receiver circuit. Each link has the potential to transmit data with a rate of 625 Mbit/s. For a flexible wiring between the boards we attached the optoelectronic devices with reconfigurable hardware. Furthermore the technical and architectural problems in designing smart detector VLSI circuits are in the focus of the paper.