Optical Transceiver Module for 1.2 Tb/s Based on Flexible Circuit Technology

We present a versatile electro-optical packaging platform for optical transceiver modules suitable for very high aggregate I/O capacity, as required, for example, in (disaggregated) data centers and servers. Real-estate limitations on the board or on the processor package laminate are overcome by using a flexible printed circuit board substrate that is folded around a solid body, resulting in a 3-D package assembly. A 48 Gb/s×10 Gb/s transceiver prototype is demonstrated as well as the design path toward a transceiver with 1.2-Tb/s aggregate I/O bandwidth. Accounting for large-scale manufacturing and deployment, we explicitly address the requirements of the optical, mechanical, thermal, and electrical interfaces as well as of all associated manufacturing processes.