The Parallel Optical Link Organization (POLO) is an ARPA sponsored industry consortium consisting of four companies and one university. The members are Hewlett- Packard, AMP, Du Pont, SDL, and the University of Southern California. The consortium’s goal is to develop a high speed (1 Gbyte/s) parallel optical interconnect module for applications in central office switching environments and clustered computing. Previous reports1 have described the general layout of the POLO interconnect module and reported preliminary results. In this paper, we discuss further progress to date on the POLO module and show results for a 10 channel module operating at 622 Mb/s per channel. In addition, we discuss the current performance limitations of the module, packaging issues associated with assembly, a testbed which utilizes the POLO interconnect for the transmission of high resolution images between workstations, and plans for the 2nd generation POLO module.
The Parallel Optical Link Organization (POLO) is an industry consortium of Hewlett-Packard, Du Pont, AMP, University of Southern California, and SDL, supported by ARPA and will operate between August 1994 and August 1997. The POLO Consortium was formed to leverage the individual strengths of its members to develop low-cost, high-performance optical interconnect modules for applications in workstation clusters, high-speed switching systems, and multimedia. The goal of the program is to demonstrate the manufacturability of affordable optoelectronic transceiver modules and to provide application platforms that show a clear advantage over copper-wire interconnections. The technical objective of the program is to provide a 10 - 20 Gb/s parallel channel optical interconnect module with a projected manufacturing cost of about $10 per channel. In addition, the POLO Consortium provides a complete solution to the end user, including a programmable host interface module and software interface. The POLO Consortium has formed a User Group consisting of seven world-leading computer, telecommunication, and optoelectronic subsystem manufacturers. Regular meetings with the User Group are planned and at the first meeting, a full set of POLO Module specifications have been discussed and generated. The POLO Consortium will provide the User Group members with hardware for evaluation and feedback.
There can be no commercial poled-polymer optical waveguide switches until several goals are reached. Among these are thermal stability, low switching voltage, and low-loss waveguides with acceptable fiber insertion loss. We report on two cross-linked materials; one shows r33 values above 10 pm/V and retains 80% of its E-O coefficient after 1500 hours at 100 degree(s)C. Using these systems for illustration, we discuss material requirements and design tradeoffs to optimize performance.
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