Innovative Optical and Electronic Interconnect Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing research

Selviah, David R.; Hutt, David A.; Walker, A. C.; Wang, K.; Fernández, FA; Conway, Paul; Milward, D.; Papakonstantinou, Ioannis; Baghsiahi, Hadi; Chappell, John H.; Zakariyah, Shefiu S.; McCarthy, Aongus; Suyal, H.

doi:10.1109/estc.2008.4684466

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The project has 7 more months to run before completion. In addition to the papers already cited, the partners, in this and in earlier projects, have fully disseminated the research as it was being performed via further published papers, conference talks, book chapters, visits to companies, universities, and to schools [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polymer multimode waveguide optical and electronic PCB manufacturing

Selviah

2009

SPIE Proceedings

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The paper describes the research in the £1.3 million IeMRC Integrated Optical and Electronic Interconnect PCB Manufacturing (OPCB) Flagship Project in which 8 companies and 3 universities carry out collaborative research and which was formed and is technically led by the author. The consortium's research is aimed at investigating a range of fabrication techniques, some established and some novel, for fabricating polymer multimode waveguides from several polymers, some formulations of which are being developed within the project. The challenge is to develop low cost waveguide manufacturing techniques compatible with commercial PCB manufacturing and to reduce their alignment cost. The project aims to take the first steps in making this hybrid optical waveguide and electrical copper track printed circuit board disruptive technology widely available by establishing and incorporating waveguide design rules into commercial PCB layout software and transferring the technology for fabricating such boards to a commercial PCB manufacturer. To focus the research the project is designing an optical waveguide backplane to tight realistic constraints, using commercial layout software with the new optical design rules, for a demonstrator into which 4 daughter cards are plugged, each carrying an aggregate of 80 Gb/s data so that each waveguide carries 10 Gb/s.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polymer multimode waveguide optical and electronic PCB manufacturing

Selviah

2009

SPIE Proceedings

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“…They are where the earliest requirements for densely-integrated optical interconnects are envisaged (Pepeljugoski et al, 2007). Development of optical PCBs and backplanes has been extensive over 15 years in laboratories round the globe (Pepeljugoski et al, 2007;Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Nishimura et al, 2011;Beals et al, 2008). Recent system-level demonstrators are indicative of development for diverse architectural implementation based on point-to-point full mesh architectures (Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Nishimura et al, 2011), cross-bar (Beals et al, 2008) and optical bus interconnects (Hughes, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Development of optical PCBs and backplanes has been extensive over 15 years in laboratories round the globe (Pepeljugoski et al, 2007;Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Nishimura et al, 2011;Beals et al, 2008). Recent system-level demonstrators are indicative of development for diverse architectural implementation based on point-to-point full mesh architectures (Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Nishimura et al, 2011), cross-bar (Beals et al, 2008) and optical bus interconnects (Hughes, 2012). The majority of the backplane implementations are based on polymer waveguides (Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Beals et al, 2008), embedded fibres (Nishimura et al, 2011), multimode or single mode glass waveguides (Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008) and on metallic hollow core (MHC) waveguides (Hughes, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent system-level demonstrators are indicative of development for diverse architectural implementation based on point-to-point full mesh architectures (Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Nishimura et al, 2011), cross-bar (Beals et al, 2008) and optical bus interconnects (Hughes, 2012). The majority of the backplane implementations are based on polymer waveguides (Shares et al, 2006;Griese, 2001;Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Karppinen et al, 2006;Selviah et al, 2008;Beals et al, 2008), embedded fibres (Nishimura et al, 2011), multimode or single mode glass waveguides (Franke and Schiefelbein, 2004;Schrö der et al, 2008) and on metallic hollow core (MHC) waveguides (Hughes, 2012). Regardless of extensive efforts, systemdesigners and technology users have indicated that mature high-volume eco-system supporting polymer waveguide technology with multisource compatible end-to-end link parts are needed prior to commercial breakthrough.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development of electro‐optical PCBs with polymer waveguides for high‐speed intra‐system interconnects

Immonen

Yan

et al. 2012

Circuit World

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to study fabrication of optical-PCBs on panel scale boards in a conventional modern PCB process environment. It evaluates impacts on board design and manufacturing with the developed optical board verifiers outlining challenges and requirements for manufacturing low-loss waveguide structures and optical building blocks. The study aims to expand the current knowledge in the field by adding results obtained by utilizing industrial production infrastructure and developed scalable manufacturing processes to fabricate optical-PCBs and board assemblies in high-volumes and low-cost manner. Design/methodology/approach -Impacts on board design and manufacturing were studied with the developed optical technology verifiers. One verifier is optical-PCB with embedded waveguides, integrated i/o couplers and optical vias. Another verifier is large size PCB with optical layer. A systemlevel optical board assembly with 12.5 Gb/s Tx/Rx devices on surface mounted ball grid array (BGA) modules is designed for optical link analysis. Fabricated optical structures on verifiers are evaluated of their physical characteristics utilizing optical, SEM, LSCM analysis methods. Performance testing is conducted using standard optical transmission measurement methods and equipment. Findings -The paper provides empirical results about fabrication of multimode optical waveguides with conventional PCB process equipment. Results suggest that current coating and imaging equipments are capable of producing optical waveguide patterns with high resolution and size accuracy. However, fabricators would require larger process window and defect tolerance for processing optical materials to obtain low-loss waveguides with sufficient yields. Research limitations/implications -Because of the limited amount of design variants in production verifiers evaluated in this paper, some impacts like effect of base material, board construction, optical layer location and beam coupling solution were not evaluated. Likewise, impacts on long-term stability and cost were not addressed. These factors however require further investigation to address technical feasibility of optical PCBs technology prior commercial high volume production. Practical implications -The paper includes implications for the development of a fabrication methods and testing procedures for optical polymer waveguide layers on PCBs. Originality/value -This paper fulfils need to provide results on design, fabrication and characterization of optical PCBs and backplanes from industrial fabricator's perspective. The paper provides input for end-user and developers to evaluate technical performance, robustness, and maturity of building blocks and supply chain to support polymer waveguide based technology for intra-system optical links.

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“…In addition Xyratex have recently led a large collaborative project in the UK "Integrated optical and electronic interconnect PCB manufacturing (OPCB)18 supported by the UK government's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), to develop and investigate varied waveguide fabrication techniques and materials including direct polymer printing.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Embedded optical interconnect technology in data storage systems

Pitwon¹,

Hopkins²,

Milward³

et al. 2010

SPIE Proceedings

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As both data storage interconnect speeds increase and form factors in hard disk drive technologies continue to shrink, the density of printed channels on the storage array midplane goes up. The dominant interconnect protocol on storage array midplanes is expected to increase to 12 Gb/s by 2012 thereby exacerbating the performance bottleneck in future digital data storage systems. The design challenges inherent to modern data storage systems are discussed and an embedded optical infrastructure proposed to mitigate this bottleneck. The proposed solution is based on the deployment of an electro-optical printed circuit board and active interconnect technology. The connection architecture adopted would allow for electronic line cards with active optical edge connectors to be plugged into and unplugged from a passive electro-optical midplane with embedded polymeric waveguides. A demonstration platform has been developed to assess the viability of embedded electro-optical midplane technology in dense data storage systems and successfully demonstrated at 10.3 Gb/s. Active connectors incorporate optical transceiver interfaces operating at 850 nm and are connected in an in-plane coupling configuration to the embedded waveguides in the midplane. In addition a novel method of passively aligning and assembling passive optical devices to embedded polymer waveguide arrays has also been demonstrated.

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Innovative Optical and Electronic Interconnect Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing research

Abstract: An overview of the £

Cited by 6 publications

References 18 publications

Polymer multimode waveguide optical and electronic PCB manufacturing

Polymer multimode waveguide optical and electronic PCB manufacturing

Development of electro‐optical PCBs with polymer waveguides for high‐speed intra‐system interconnects

Embedded optical interconnect technology in data storage systems

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