Optoelectronic-VLSI: photonics integrated with VLSI circuits

Optoelectronic-VLSI (OE-VLSI) technology represents the intimate integration of photonic devices with silicon VLSI electronics. We review the motivations and status of emerging OE-VLSI technologies and examine the performance of OE-VLSI technology versus conventional wire-bonded OE packaging. The results suggest that OE-VLSI integration offers substantial power and speed improvements even when relatively small numbers of photonic devices are driven with commodity complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor logic technologies.