Pluggable Electro-Optical Circuit Board Interconnect Based on Embedded Graded-Index Planar Glass Waveguides

Pitwon, Richard; Brusberg, Lars; Schröder, Henning; Whalley, Simon; Wang, Kai; Miller, Allen; Stevens, Paul; Worrall, Alex; Messina, Alessandro; Cole, Andrew G.

doi:10.1109/jlt.2014.2361438

Cited by 25 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…A special interface card was designed to fit in the disk drive carrier and allow a standard 2.5″ hard disk drive to communicate and connect optically to the electro-optical midplane. Figure 10a shows the link topology of each optical interface card, which contained a proprietary "MorningStar" pluggable optical connector [18], two Avago McLink dualchannel board-mounted optical transceivers, a six-port SAS expander and an electrical connector compliant with conventional SAS/SATA disk drive interfaces. The hard disk drive supported 6 Gb/s SAS and maintained two bidirectional links to allow high availability connectivity.…”

Section: Optical Disk Drive Interface Cardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of System Embedded Optical Interconnect in Sub-Top-of-Rack Data Center Systems

et al. 2022

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In this paper we review key technological milestones in system embedded optical interconnects in data centers that have been achieved between 2014 and 2020 on major European Union research and development projects. This includes the development of proprietary optically enabled data storage and switch systems and optically enabled data storage and compute subsystems. We report on four optically enabled data center system demonstrators: LightningValley, ThunderValley2, Pegasus and Aurora, which include advanced optical circuits based on polymer waveguides and fibers and proprietary electro-optical connectors. We also report on optically enabled subsystems including Ethernet-connected hard disk drives and microservers. Both are designed in the same pluggable carrier form factor and with embedded optical transceiver and connector interfaces, thus allowing, for the first time, both compute and storage nodes to be optically interchangeable and directly interconnectable over long distances. Finally, we present the Nexus platform, which allows different optically enabled data center test systems and subsystems to be interconnected and comparatively characterized within a data center test environment.

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Section: Optical Disk Drive Interface Cardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of System Embedded Optical Interconnect in Sub-Top-of-Rack Data Center Systems

et al. 2022

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“…We report on the fabrication of planar graded index polymer waveguides using the Mosquito method [1] devised by Keio University and the photo-addressing method devised by Sumitomo Bakelite [2], and the fabrication of planar graded index glass waveguides using ion diffusion on thin glass foils as developed by Fraunhofer IZM [4]. We comparatively characterize their insertion loss at both 850 nm and 1310 nm and signal integrity at 10.3 Gb/s to assess their suitability with respect to two emerging transceiver classes based on directly modulated multimode 850 nm VCSELs and single-mode 1310 nm silicon photonic integrated circuits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive Evaluation of Planar Embedded Glass and Polymer Waveguides in Data Center Environments

et al. 2017

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Optical printed circuit board (OPCB) waveguide materials and fabrication methods have advanced considerably over the past 15 years, giving rise to two classes of embedded planar graded index waveguide based on polymer and glass. We consider the performance of these two emerging waveguide classes in view of the anticipated deployment in data center environments of optical transceivers based on directly modulated multimode short wavelength VCSELs against those based on longer wavelength single-mode photonic integrated circuits. We describe the fabrication of graded index polymer waveguides, using the Mosquito and photo-addressing methods, and graded index glass waveguides, using ion diffusion on thin glass foils. A comparative characterization was carried out on the waveguide classes to show a clear reciprocal dependence of the performance of different waveguide classes on wavelength. Furthermore, the different waveguide types were connected into an optically disaggregated data switch and storage system to evaluate and validate their suitability for deployment in future data center environments.

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“…Another challenge is the precise free-space coupling between components and linecards. In this work the waveguides will be planar integrated in commercial available display glass by thermal ion-exchange processing beyond the experimental stage of EOCB demonstrators recently demonstrated with areas of (233 x 303) mm² [13][14] [15]. Size enlargement has to be regarded as very challenging for all PCB processes in terms of handling and tolerance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large Optical Backplane With Embedded Graded-Index Glass Waveguides and Fiber-Flex Termination

Brusberg

Whalley²,

Pitwon

et al. 2016

J. Lightwave Technol.

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Introduction of electro-optical circuit board (EOCB) technologies based on embedded glass waveguides in the system enclosure of current data storage, compute or switch platforms will be instrumental in accommodating the prohibitive bandwidth densities projected in exascale data centers, access networks and high performance computing environments in future. The main focus of this paper is, therefore, on the realization of large EOCB backplanes (350 x 465) mm²) with passive dual star interconnect topologies. The waveguides are embedded inside glass panels using a two-step thermal ion exchange process [1]. The fabricated embedded waveguides are then characterized for propagation and coupling losses across different wavelength ranges and for different coupling arrangements. The fabrication process for these large panels is briefly explained accompanied by the lamination process of four separate glass panels. The connectivity between backplane and peripheral cards is addressed using fiber flex termination with two possible waveguide interfaces -actively assembled pluggable interface and passively assembled adhesive bonded interface. A demonstration platform is also finally reported and the viability evaluated for optical connectivity and system efficiency is tested for the whole system containing fiber flex termination.Index Terms-Electro-optical circuit boards, ion-exchange, glass optical waveguides, graded index waveguides, optical interconnects, optical glass S. Whalley is with

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Pluggable Electro-Optical Circuit Board Interconnect Based on Embedded Graded-Index Planar Glass Waveguides

Cited by 25 publications

References 15 publications

Evolution of System Embedded Optical Interconnect in Sub-Top-of-Rack Data Center Systems

Evolution of System Embedded Optical Interconnect in Sub-Top-of-Rack Data Center Systems

Competitive Evaluation of Planar Embedded Glass and Polymer Waveguides in Data Center Environments

Large Optical Backplane With Embedded Graded-Index Glass Waveguides and Fiber-Flex Termination

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