Electrical-Optical High Speed Serial Server Scalability Link

Abstract

Increased demand for performance has driven a significant increase in the data rate and the complexity of today's high speed systems and interconnect. While skin effects and dielectric loss are significant sources of limitation of current high-speed digital communication [1], equalization at the transmitter, receiver, and interconnect has extended the range and performance of copper links. Electrical copper links are typically used to interconnect multiple processor subsystems to build symmetric multi-processor (SMP) systems, as well as to connect input/output (I/0) subsystems across relative long distances.During the electrical design and validation of a highly scalable, modular SMP server [3] with data rates of 3.2 GT/s (GigaTransfers per second) and higher, a test vehicle was designed and built. The goal was to characterize and contrast an all-copper external cable and a copper-to-optical interconnect technology, and to understand how to achieve the overall system design goals from the perspective of link performance, electrical challenges, and physical design constraints.Key design parameters have been modeled and correlated with laboratory measurements such as AC coupling capacitor selection and layout optimization, via stub, back-drilling, and signal launch effects. Modeling techniques and correlation challenges are discussed in this paper.

The Domestic and International Research Situation of Photoelectric Interconnection Technology

“…Fengtao, etc of Georgia institute of technology made systematic research on micro lens integration of optical waveguide, pillar structure of waveguide mirror, hybrid integration of point to point optical interconnection on circuit board, and Optoelectronics Engineering and Information Technologies in Industry three-dimension photoelectric interconnection respectively [3]. Sun Microsystems, IBM, Ansoft, Omega Optics and other American companies made deeply study on three-dimension photoelectric interconnection in chip, optical interconnection between chips, extension controller of optical interconnection in server and fully embedded board level optical interconnection technology [4].…”