An OE-VLSI for parallel optical interconnection

This paper presents a prototype OE-VLSI (Optoelectronic-VLSI) with 12-channel input and output ports for optical parallel link applications. The OE-VLSI comprises of a 12-channel parallel VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Semi-conductor Laser) array and a 12-channel parallel Photo Diode array, a CPU, a 12-channel VCSEL driver array and a 12-channel optical front-end amplifier. The 12 × 10Gbps VCSEL driver array and the optical front-end amplifier array are fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The chip was partitioned into 12 parallel channels to demonstrate chip-to-chip interconnection functions appropriate for applications of OE-VLSI technology. The OE-VLSI chip has been validated on an optical parallel transmission system with bit-error-rate BER less than 10−12 and an aggregate 120Gpbs bandwidth.