Current progress of advanced high speed parallel optical links forcomputer clusters and switching systems

摘要

This paper discusses the present state of the art of paralleloptical links for interconnection systems required e.g. in computerclusters and telecom terabit switching systems. The dramatic growth ofbandwidth demand in interconnection systems drives the throughput ofparallel optical links to over 30 Gbit/s per optical module. The systemarchitecture, the electro-optical components and the performance of anasynchronous 12 channel parallel optical link, PAROLI(R), that carriesdata at 1.25 to 2.5 Gbit/s per channel is described. Methods of systemperformance evaluation by eye diagram analysis and BER scan techniquesare discussed and measurement results are shown. In addition, a parallellink for synchronous data transmission, attractive for computer systems,is presented for data rates up to 1.25 Gbit/s per channel(DC-PAROLI(R)). Channel-to-channel skew limits the data rate andtransmission distance of such a system. Therefore, concepts for activeskew-compensation are described to overcome the bandwidth-distancelimitations