High Bandwidth, Low Latency Optical Interconnect

This proposal addresses the problem of providing a high bandwidth connection with a latency comparable to the transit time of the interconnection. Free space optics is uniquely suited to providing such an interconnection because of the high parallelism of the devices and the crosstalk and isolation characteristics. The novelty of this proposal is that we seek to exploit the parallelism of free space for high speed interconnects across distances larger than those realized before for very low latency interconnects. The main technical problems to be addressed on this program are: (1) Development of an understanding of the tradeoffs, at the system level, for different implementation choices for a relatively long, highly parallel, low latency link. Previous analysis have assumed short interconnect (10s of millimeters or less) or did not address high parallelism; (2) Experimental characterization of existing transmitter and receiver designs to enable design of practical arrays of elements. Experimental verification and understanding of the operation of integrated transmitter and receiver arrays will lead to improved designs for larger and faster arrays; and (3) Development of a preliminary design for a low latency, highly parallel link.