High channel-count optical interconnection for servers

Abstract

When optical input/output is the essential signal path from one CPU, the aggregate optical bandwidth will exceed 10 Tbps, which requires 500 optical channels at 20 Gbps. Since the CPU is mounted on a CPU carrier, the carrier has to have attachment points at the interface of the carrier. Although one can use the side walls to connect to optical cables with a large number of optical channels, 10 or more optical connectors are needed. We propose a more compact and rugged approach, where the bottom of the carrier area is shared by electrical and optical contacts in the socket on an optically enabled printed circuit board (PCB).. Proper packaging design including the lens coupling allows many optical channels exceeding 500 can be simply connected to the optical channels on the PCB without high precision mounting. © 2010 IEEE.