Optical interconnects: opportunities and device challenges

It is now well understood that optics is the main, and possibly the only, physical solution that could allow interconnects to continue to scale down in energy per bit and up in density of information, especially for interconnects off chips and at longer distances. The continuing growth of usage in the internet and in the data centers that feed the information demands continuing scaling of interconnects at all levels, with density and energy being key drivers. This talk will summarize these trends and discuss the kinds of technologies that may be needed, including optical and optoelectronic devices and their integration with silicon electronics. Recent examples including novel nanophotonic structures for wavelength splitting, new tunable and efficient resonant photodetectors in silicon, and sub-fJ/bit record low energy modulators will be discussed.