Board-level optical clock signal distribution based on guided-wave optical interconnects in conjunction with waveguide holograms

摘要

Abstract: In this paper, we represent our effort to construct an optoelectronic interconnection layer for high-speed optical clock signal distribution in a Cray supercomputer board. The optoelectronic interconnection layer under investigation employs optical channel waveguides and 3 dB waveguide splitters in conjunction with surface-normal waveguide couplers. The difficulties associated with the complicated 3D multiple alignments are significantly reduced by the surface-normal fanout beams and the unique planar device feature. 1-GHz clear optical clock signal is demonstrated experimentally with a guided-wave interconnection length of 45 cm. Some new techniques to fabricate large-area optical channel waveguides and surface-normal waveguide grating couplers are also presented.!17