A Field Programmable Gate Array with Optical I/O

Abstract

A Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) with optical I/O is described. FPGAs with optical I/O can have their functionality specified in the field by downloading a control bit stream, and can be used in a wide range of applications, such as optical signal processing and optical interconnects. Our device implements six state-of-the-art Programmable Logic Arrays (PLAs) on a 2x2 mm die. The device was fabricated through the 1997 Lucent/ARPA/COOP workshop using a 0.5 micron CMOS/SEED technology. All devices are fully functional, and the electronic datapaths have been verified at 200 Mhz. The device has been programmed to implement a 2-stage optical switching network with six 4x4 crossbar switches, which can realize over 190 million unique programmable input-output permutations. The same 0.5 micron device scaled to a 1 cm 2 substrate could support 4 thousand optical I/O, 1 Terabit/sec of optical I/O bandwidth, and offer fully programmable digital functionality with ≈ 110,000 programmable logic gates.