ParSEC - Parallel Simulation of Electron Cooling

65731 Highly parallel optical interconnect systems are needed to harness the unprecedented bandwidth of dense wave division multiplexing for Department of Energy high performance computing and other computing-intensive scientific applications. This project will develop a rugged, highly parallel, multilayer board level optical interconnect that can be cost effectively mass produced by simple holographic lithography. Waveguiding in photopolymer material will be utilized to meet current and future interconnect requirements. In Phase I, the multiplayer, polymer-based, holographic optical interconnect system was designed and analyzed. All critical components were experimentally fabricated, and the feasibility of fabricating these multilayer optical component structures with high mechanical and wavelength tolerance was demonstrated. Phase II will extend the proposed technology, design and develop scaled-up fabrication system, and develop a fully operational, highly parallel, high speed optical interconnect prototype system. The system will be tested for future supercomputer and cluster computing interconnect applications. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The new technology should lead to local board level interconnects with unprecedented cost/performance. This will benefit not only subsurface monitoring but also highly parallel computers, communications systems, high bandwidth memory systems, medical applications, radar signal processing, and ballistic missile defense systems.