In contrasts to its overwhelming success in telecommunications and networking so far optical interconnections have had nearly no impact on board or rack level interconnections in real life computers. This can be attributed to two problems: the incompatibility of opto-electronic packaging with standard electronic assembly procedures and the lack of system architectures optimized to take advantage of the specific properties of optical links. Overcoming the above problems is the goal of the HOLMS (High Speed Opto-Electronic Memory Systems) project sponsored by the European 1ST program. The project aims to seamlessly integrate free space, waveguide and fiber optical links with standard electronic packaging technology. In the architecture domain it addresses the most pressing problem of contemporary computer architecture: memory latency. For this purpose a memory architecture that specifically utilizes the advantages of optical interconnections has been designed and will be implemented in a real life computer system.
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