Waveguide-coupled parallel optical transceiver technology for Tb/s-class chip-to-chip data transmission

The IBM Terabus program has developed parallel optical interconnects for terabit/sec-class chip-to-chip communications through printed circuit boards with integrated optical waveguides. 16 TX + 16 RX channel transceiver "Optomodules" were assembled and fully characterized, with fiber-coupled full links operating up to 15 Gb/s, for an aggregate bi-directional data transfer rate of 240 Gb/s. Furthermore, we have demonstrated a complete link between two Optomodules through polymer waveguides on a printed circuit board, with all 32 uni-directional links operating error-free at 10Gb/s, for a 160 Gb/s bidirectional aggregate data rate. This is the fastest, widest, and most integrated multimode optical bus ever demonstrated.