Optoelectronic interconnects between VLSI chips have been identified by the
Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) Roadmap as one of the few solutio
ns to overcoming the communication bandwidth bottleneck between VLSI chips.
Large-scale demonstrators based on optical interconnects, when fully opera
tional, can exhibit today the same aggregate bandwidth as that foreseen by
the Roadmap for the year 2007. Massive parallelism, low input/output drivin
g energy over large distances, and synchronous processing of hundreds of op
tical information input channels mean that these prototypes can potentially
provide on/off communication rates in the tera-pin-Hz region (i.e. a total
capacity of one terabit/s). After discussing the limitations of electrical
interconnects this paper reviews the means of integrating optoelectronic c
omponents with VLSI chips, suitable types of optoelectronic device and the
three main approaches to constructing optical data links: fibre-ribbons, pl
anar waveguides and free-space optics.