Three-dimensional through-wafer fan-out optical interconnects

Marion R. LeCompte; Xiao Gao; Harry E. Bates Jr.; Jens Meckel; Shouyuan Shi; Dennis W. Prather

doi:10.1117/12.384414

27 April 2000 Three-dimensional through-wafer fan-out optical interconnects

Marion R. LeCompte, Xiao Gao, Harry E. Bates Jr., Jens Meckel, Shouyuan Shi, Dennis W. Prather

Proceedings Volume 3952, Optoelectronic Interconnects VII; Photonics Packaging and Integration II; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384414
Event: Symposium on Integrated Optoelectronics, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

As processor speeds rapidly approach the Gigahertz regime, the disparity between process time and memory access time plays an increasing roll in the overall limitation of processor performance. In addition, limitations in interconnect density and bandwidth serve to exacerbate current bottlenecks, particularly as computer architectures continue to reduce in size. To address these issues, we propose a 3D architecture based on through-wafer vertical optical interconnects. To facilitate integration into the current manufacturing infrastructure, our system is monolithically fabricate din the silicon substrate and preserves scale of integration by using meso-scopic diffractive optical elements (DOEs) for beam fan-out. We believe that this architecture can alleviate the disparity between processor speeds and memory access times while increasing interconnect density by at least an order of magnitude. We are current working to demonstrate a prototype system that consists of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers, diffractive optical elements, photodetectors, and memory units integrate don a single silicon substrate. To this end, we are currently refining our fabrication and analysis methods for the realization of meso-scopic DOEs. In this paper, we present our progress to date and demonstrate through-silicon optical data transmission using DOEs that were designed, fabricated, and characterized at the University of Delaware. We present the validation of our theoretical models for the design of such DOEs with experimental data and discuss applications for our proposed architecture including instruction level parallel processors and field programmable gate arrays.

Citation Download Citation

Marion R. LeCompte, Xiao Gao, Harry E. Bates Jr., Jens Meckel, Shouyuan Shi, and Dennis W. Prather "Three-dimensional through-wafer fan-out optical interconnects", Proc. SPIE 3952, Optoelectronic Interconnects VII; Photonics Packaging and Integration II, (27 April 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384414

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