Communication in macrochips using silicon photonics for high-performance and low-energy computing

Abstract

There have been a number of recent high-profile advances in silicon-integrated optical devices, including low-loss silicon waveguides, integrated laser modulators and photodetectors, optical gratings for surface-normal attach of fibers to chips, and many more. These technologies open the possibility of using silicon-based nano-photonics inside a traditional computer system based on very large scale integration (VLSI) chips using todays most advanced complementary metal-oxide-silicon (CMOS) technologies. Such a system might offer the cost and computing performance advantages of modern microprocessors in conjunction with the low latency and enormous bandwidth of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optics.