Optical Interconnects - Technologies and applications

The use of optical fiber, with its inherent advantages of high bandwidth, low loss, and small size, is the primary means of transmission over distances greater than 100 m. However, demand driven by AI (artificial intelligence) is driving the use of fiber over shorter distances, where the low power consumption of components becomes a key factor: this is referred to as optical interconnects. As technologies evolve, optical interconnects—which link data patch panels together—are now appearing on these panels to interconnect processors with one another. The demand for data switching and processing driven by the widespread public access to AI has prompted the semiconductor and telecommunications industries to develop new technologies compatible with these data flows. Thus, the rapid development of co-packaging, silicon photonics, and nanomanufacturing technologies (photonic crystals, metamaterials, plasmonics, biophotonics, etc.) has, in turn, led to significant advancements in the field of integrated photonics, enabling the increasingly sophisticated integration of a ever-growing number of electronic functions into components of ever-smaller size.

This article, based on the principles of optical interconnects presented in the parent article [E 3 652] Optical Interconnects, introduces the technologies used, their applications, and new areas of research. Combined with the very strong growth of microelectronics, these developments should enable optical interconnects to become established in the field of communications between boards, between components, and eventually even within a single component.