Optical Interconnects in Conventional Electronic Computers

Optical interconnections have become the medium of choice for the long haul communication. As the speed of the modern day computers are increasing, the speed of data transfer may reach a limit. This creates a motivation to replace electronic buses with all optical ones. Several avenues of research have emerged in optical interconnects for digital systems. In systems architecture level studies, the goal is to understand the role of the different levels of interconnection hierarchy within digital systems in the overall performance equation. Another avenue of studies identify active and passive components that will be most suitable to implement optical interconnects. These components are used to design the physical organization, the communication protocol in the existing computer architecture. Another type of studies may propose modification of the existing computer architecture, which can take advantage of the high bandwidth, multiwavelength, ultrafast optical communication and various advancement in long haul optical communication.