<title>Recent progress in short-distance optical interconnects</title>

Abstract

Short distance optical interconnects are under development for a range of applications including local area networks, optical backplanes, and optoelectronic accelerators or signal processors. In some applications, the aggregate bandwidth required cannot be provided with electrical interconnects, offering an obvious advantage for optics, while in others it is the density of available interconnects which motivates the use of optics. In most commercial applications, it is the cost of the interconnect solution which will affect its acceptance by system integrator. For optics to be applied in a broad range of applications, greater transparency must be provided to the system integrator. We describe both intercabinet and intracabinet interconnects in which the addition of optical interconnects has been designed to perturb the overall system as little as possible and yet still take advantage of optics.