Planar polymer and glass graded index waveguides for data center applications

Richard Pitwon; Akira Yamauchi; Lars Brusberg; Kai Wang; Takaaki Ishigure; Henning Schröder; Marcel Neitz; Alex Worrall

doi:10.1117/12.2212376

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15 March 2016 Planar polymer and glass graded index waveguides for data center applications

Richard Pitwon, Akira Yamauchi, Lars Brusberg, Kai Wang, Takaaki Ishigure, Henning Schröder, Marcel Neitz, Alex Worrall

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Proceedings Volume 9753, Optical Interconnects XVI; 97530I (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2212376
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Embedded optical waveguide technology for optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs) has advanced considerably over the past decade both in terms of materials and achievable waveguide structures. Two distinct classes of planar graded index multimode waveguide have recently emerged based on polymer and glass materials. We report on the suitability of graded index polymer waveguides, fabricated using the Mosquito method, and graded index glass waveguides, fabricated using ion diffusion on thin glass foils, for deployment within future data center environments as part of an optically disaggregated architecture. To this end, we first characterize the wavelength dependent performance of different waveguide types to assess their suitability with respect to two dominant emerging multimode transceiver classes based on directly modulated 850 nm VCSELs and 1310 silicon photonics devices. Furthermore we connect the different waveguide types into an optically disaggregated data storage system and characterize their performance with respect to different common high speed data protocols used at the intra and inter rack level including 10 Gb Ethernet and Serial Attached SCSI.

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Richard Pitwon, Akira Yamauchi, Lars Brusberg, Kai Wang, Takaaki Ishigure, Henning Schröder, Marcel Neitz, and Alex Worrall "Planar polymer and glass graded index waveguides for data center applications", Proc. SPIE 9753, Optical Interconnects XVI, 97530I (15 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2212376

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