|
The demonstration and exploitation of IC's with aggregate I/O data rates of around 1THz will be a considerable advance over existing state-of-the-art electronics. The provision of more than ~200 pins onto a chip is not easy and driving this number of electrical outputs at >100MHz is difficult. Consequently, conventional techniques are limited to aggregate I/O data rates of around 10 GHz. Thus we are proposing to demonstrate two orders of magnitude increase in communication bandwidth. (It should be noted that the optical connections are in addition to the usual electronic ones.) It is anticipated that this will prove to be the first step towards multi-THz aggregate bandwidth connections to silicon IC's.
It is important that we not only develop the optoelectronic interface itself but also show how it can be used in a practical 3-D optical interconnect system. By building the crossbar demonstrator system, capable of exploiting such an optoelectronic hybrid chip, we shall not only stimulate the required device development but also advance the state-of-the-art in switches of this type. The techniques that we shall develop, both hardware and software, should form the first steps required toward industrial implementation of such systems.
|