A High-Speed Optical Multidrop Bus for Computer Interconnections

Abstract

Signal integrity constraints of high-speed electronics have made multidrop electrical buses infeasible. This high-speed alternative uses hollow metal waveguides and pellicle beam splitters that interconnect modules attached to the bus. With 1 mw of laser power, the bus can interconnect eight modules at 10 gbps per channel and achieves an aggregate bandwidth of more than 25 gbytes per second with 10-bit-wide signaling paths.