Fully embedded board-level guided-wave optoelectronic interconnects

A fully embedded board-level guided-wave optical interconnection is presented to solve the packaging compatibility problem. All elements involved in providing high-speed optical communications within one board are demonstrated. Experimental results on a 12-channel linear array of thin-film polyimide waveguides, vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL's) (42 mu m), and silicon MSM photodectors (10 mu m) suitable for a fully embedded implementation are provided. Two types of waveguide couplers, tilted gratings and 45 degrees total internal reflection mirrors, are fabricated within the polyimide waveguides. Thirty-five to near 100% coupling efficiencies are experimentally confirmed. By doing so, all the real estate of the PC board surface are occupied by electronics, and therefore one only observes the performance enhancement due to the employment of optical inter-connection but does not worry about the interface problem between electronic and optoelectronic components unlike conventional approaches. A high speed 1-48 optical clock signal distribution network for Cray T-90 supercomputer is demonstrated. A waveguide propagation loss of 0.21 dB/cm at 850 was experimentally confirmed for the 1-48 clock signal distribution and for point-to-point interconnects. The feasibility of using polyimide as the interlayer dielectric material to form hybrid three-dimensional interconnects is also demonstrated. Finally, a waveguide bus architecture is presented, which provides a realistic bidirectional broadcasting transmission of optical signals. Such a structure is equivalent to such IEEE standard bus protocols as VME bus and FutureBus(+).