ALIGNMENT TOLERANT DENSE BOARD-TO-BOARD OPTICAL INTERCONNECTS FOR SIMD PROCESSOR APPLICATIONS

The goal of this Phase-I effort is to establish the feasibility, performance, and advantages of a novel alignment tolerant dense board-to-board optical interconnect for application to SIMD architectures. Advantages of this technology include: the abilityto extend a high performance SIMD processors onto multiple boards; compact high density multichannel interconnection; practical alignment tolerances that do not require extensive modifications to commercial computer structures; high speed; EMI sensitivityreduction; and potentially low cost. The Phase I effort includes modeling of the new device technology, the construction of an experimental feasibility demonstrator, optimization of the technology for SIMD architecture benefits, and the design of a highperformance prototype interconnect for demonstration in Phase II. The anticipated benefit from this research is the development of a high performance alignment tolerant dense board-to-board optical interconnect that enables higher performance SIMDprocessors. This novel technology offers benefits including: the ability to extend a high performance SIMD processors onto multiple boards; compact high density multichannel interconnection; practical alignment tolerances that do not require extensivemodifications to typical computer structures; high speed; EMI sensitivity reduction; and potentially low cost. Commercial applications include special purpose processing such as graphics rendering and medical imaging.