High density optical interconnects using VCSEL and polymer waveguides for board and backplane applications

Due to the explosive growth in high speed network communication and the rapid advance in the processor speed and processing power, data transfer bandwidths between chips, modules, board, backplane and cabinets have increased drastically. The required interconnect bandwidths for efficient data communication across different platforms have increased accordingly. The optical backplane offers a much higher data bandwidth and interconnect density with minimum cross-talk. However, in order to successfully deploy optical interconnect in complex electronic systems such as board and backplane and offer performance/cost comparable of superior to electronic solutions, the development of optoelectronic interconnect devices, components, packaging and processing technologies must be compatible with the existing electronic interconnect counterparts. In this work, we report the recent development of high density optical interconnect technology using VCSEL and polymer waveguides for board and backplane level applications.