An optical interconnection technology for multilayer printed circuit boards

In order to make full use of next generation microprocessors operating with clock speeds of more than 1 GHz there is a great need for high-bandwidth off-chip interconnects. Electrical interconnects on conventional printed circuit boards which are characterized by a limited bandwidth and emission of and sensibility to electromagnetic radiation cannot provide the required performance. To overcome this bottleneck, optical interconnects can be used for realizing high-bandwidth and high-performance information channels within and between systems. Moreover, they are totally insensible to electromagnetic noise and of course they do not radiate themselves. After introducing the main technologies for realizing electrical-optical circuit printed circuit boards, the design process with its modeling and simulation tasks is addressed.