Advances in High-Density Inter-Chip Interconnects with Photonic Wiring

Yutaka URINO  Yoshiji NOGUCHI  Nobuaki HATORI  Masashige ISHIZAKA  Tatsuya USUKI  Junichi FUJIKATA  Koji YAMADA  Tsuyoshi HORIKAWA  Takahiro NAKAMURA  Yasuhiko ARAKAWA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E96-C    No.7    pp.958-965
Publication Date: 2013/07/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1353
DOI: 10.1587/transele.E96.C.958
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section INVITED PAPER (Special Section on Recent Advances in Integrated Photonic Devices)
Category: 
Keyword: 
integrated optics,  integrated optoelectronics,  optical devices,  optical interconnections,  

Full Text: FreePDF(6MB)
Summary: 
One of the most serious challenges facing the exponential performance growth in the information industry is a bandwidth bottleneck in inter-chip interconnects. We therefore propose a photonics-electronics convergence system with a silicon optical interposer. We examined integration between photonics and electronics and integration between light sources and silicon substrates, and we fabricated a conceptual model of the proposed system based on the results of those examinations. We also investigated the configurations and characteristics of optical components for the silicon optical interposer: silicon optical waveguides, silicon optical splitters, silicon optical modulators, germanium photodetectors, arrayed laser diodes, and spot-size converters. We then demonstrated the feasibility of the system by fabricating a high-density optical interposer by using silicon photonics integrated with these optical components on a single silicon substrate. As a result, we achieved error-free data transmission at 12.5 Gbps and a high bandwidth density of 6.6 Tbps/cm2 with the optical interposer. We think that this technology will solve the bandwidth bottleneck problem.