Demonstration of a compact low-power 250-Gb/s parallel-WDM optical interconnect

In this letter, we demonstrate error-free operation of a 12-fiber /spl times/4-wavelength /spl times/5.21-Gb/s parallel-wavelength-division-multiplexed (PWDM) optical link. The 250-Gb/s transmitter and receiver assemblies each have a 5/spl times/8-mm footprint and consume a combined power of 1.5 W. To our knowledge, this is the first publication of a fully functional PWDM optical interconnect as well as the highest demonstrated bandwidth per unit area and bandwidth per unit power consumption for any multiple-channel fiber-optic interconnect. This technology is intended for short-distance high-bandwidth-density applications such as multiprocessor computer backplanes.