Technological development is pushing chip performances higher every day. Feature sizes are decreasing, while chip size and data rates continue to rise. Optimal exploitation of this increasing number of faster devices per chip is often hampered by too slow a communication rate between interconnected integrated circuits [3]. The problem has already become a critical bottleneck in some application...

A general design for high-bandwidth, single-mode, lossless, optical micro-circuitry with fully three-dimensional circuit paths is demonstrated. Our 3D circuit design consists of dense stacking several planar microchip layers into the 2D-3D photonic band gap heterostructures and linking them with vertical interconnects. The 3D microchip enables an extra "dimension" of up to 200 nanometer single-...

A silicon-compatible light source is the final missing piece for completing high-speed, low-power on-chip optical interconnects. In this paper, we present a germanium nanowire light emitter that encompasses all the aspects of potential low-threshold lasers: highly strained germanium gain medium, strain-induced pseudoheterostructure, and high-Q nanophotonic cavity. Our nanowire structure present...

We demonstrate a 2.5Gb/s optical intra-MCM data link with a four-channel micro-optical bridge. This bridge was fabricated by deep proton lithography and monolithically integrates cylindrical lenses and micro-mirrors. 1. Introduction Future advances in the application of photonic interconnects will involve the insertion of parallel-channel links into Multi-Chip Modules (MCMs) [1]. These will mak...

This report presents the innovation potential for chip-to-chip plasmonic interconnects and European-funded project NAVOLCHI that aims to fulfill the promise. Plasmonic interconnects are a special kind of optical interconnects, i.e. they utilize the superior bandwidth of light to achieve great speeds of data flow. Plasmonic interconnects may resolve known bottleneck issues in communications, suc...

The application of well-known concepts from the telecommunications industry to optical interconnects is common; however, significant modifications of the typical approaches may be required to keep costs low. We suggest such an approach by demonstrating the operation of a multiple channel chip-to-chip wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) interconnect through a single fiber using GaAs diodes fli...

With more and more processor cores integrated on a chip, Networks-on-chip (NoC) is emerging as a candidate architecture for multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoC). Traditional metallic interconnects have become the bottleneck of NoC due to the limited bandwidth, long delay, and high power consumption. Optical Network-on-Chip (ONoC) can decrease interconnect delay and provide higher bandwidth wi...

When silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs), defined for transmitting and receiving optical data, are successfully monolithic-integrated into major silicon electronic chips as chip-level optical I/Os (inputs/outputs), it will bring innovative changes in data computing and communications. Here, we propose new photonic integration scheme, a single-chip optical transceiver based on a monolith...

It is predicted that the increase in microprocessor clock frequency will create bandwidth limitations for copper interconnects on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) due to signal attenuation, Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and crosstalk [1]. Optical interconnects could be a viable solution to these problems. This paper explores the potential and challenges for optical interconnects in UltraShort-...

Optical interconnects are progressively replacing wires at shorter and shorter distances in information processing machines. This paper summarizes the progress toward and prospects for the penetration of optics all the way to the silicon chip.