VCSEL-ARRAY-BASED ANGLE-MULTIPLEXED OPTOELECTRONIC CROSSBAR INTERCONNECTS

A large crossbar switch, which is a desirable building block for any l ow-latency interconnect network, is difficult to implement because of many practical problems associated with digital electronics. We propos e a new method for implementing a large optoelectronic crossbar interc onnect to take advantage of a unique principle of optics. Based on an emerging vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) technology, a passive angle-multiplexed beam-steering architecture is proposed as a key component of the optoelectronic crossbar. Various optical system p arameters are evaluated. Because there is no optical fan-out power los s, the interconnect capacity of the proposed system is determined by t he diffraction-limited receiver power cutoff, and therefore interconne ction of more than 1000 nodes with a per node bandwidth of 1 GHz is po ssible with today's technology. A 64-element VCSEL-array-based proof-o f-principle optical system for studying the interconnect scalability h as been built. Details of the features of the proposed system, its adv antages and limitations, demonstration experimental results, and their analyses are presented.