Objective
The objectives of the project and the approaches to be taken can be summarised as follows:
- Demonstration of parallel connections to Si-IC's based on assembly with III-V semiconductor optoelectronic chips containing arrays of detectors, and modulators or emitters. The target specification is 4k optical channels (64 x 64) each operating at 250 Mbit/s. This corresponds to an aggregate i/o of 1 Tbit/s. Both InGaAs detector/modulator arrays and VCSELs will be investigated as the optical interface devices.
- Assessment of a number of free-space optical interconnect architectures, suitable for linking high performance processor/memory modules or other electronic nodes with particular attention to scalability.
- Construction of an experimental demonstrator system suitable for showing the potential of such free-space links and acting as the basis for advancing the required optical and packaging hardware. This will take the form of a single-stage optoelectronic 64 x 64 crossbar switch, capable of fully non-blocking, self-routing of > 150 Mbit/s signals.
As feature sizes on silicon IC's become smaller and the performance of individual chips becomes more powerful, so the problem of providing a proportional increase in external input/output capacity becomes harder. Physical limits on the numbers, and bandwidth of, electrical pin connections create a substantial bottleneck. This project aims to develop and exploit smart-pixel techniques, which provide three-dimensional optical interconnects based on multiple free-space connections distributed across the full area of the chip in array format.
The proposed 3-D free-space approach is particularly attractive as, by permitting the construction of high-throughput reconfigurable interconnects (such as the crossbar switch), it could rapidly open up the construction of powerful information processing machines based on highly interconnected processor and memory blocks. This would include massively parallel systems and advanced shared/distributed memory machines. One could therefore anticipate significant impact on all those applications currently looking to exploit highly-parallel computing systems - an increasing domain, encompassing tasks such as engineering simulations, computational science applications, real-time image processing and game/entertainment systems. Distributed sensing/control systems in which large amounts of data need to be communicated from node to node with minimal delay will be another important application.
The project will explore the long-term potential of this approach, which offers the prospect of creating wide-band links to advanced Si-IC's with no limitation on connection distance and with aggregate bandwidths in excess of 10 Tbit/s.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencescomputational science
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssemiconductivity
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processing
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
EH14 4AS EDINBURGH
United Kingdom