Contents I. Introduction
In conventional computer systems such as in data centers, the electrical switch chip is flip-chip bonded to a chip carrier. The laser diode driver (LDD) and the VCSEL are on another chip carrier connected via short wire-bonds [3]. A printed circuit board (PCB) transmission line connects the data-producing chip to the laser diode driver as shown in Fig. 1(a). To reduce power dissipation, the stand-alone LDD can be embedded with the switch in the proposed design as suggested in Fig. 2(b). Accordingly, the VCSEL can be driven using a voltage-mode-logic-based (VML) transmitter. Therefore, designing a modified circuit that can drive either a VCSEL through an electrical link, or an electrical link can be a feasible solution to reduce the power consumption and the overall cost of the transmitter, as there will be one circuit that can do both functions instead of separate circuits for each function.
