A commercial optical computer may still be several years away, but optical technology will take a step nearer the mainstream if a three-year project part-funded by the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency meets its goals. The agency is putting up $9m and contributing partners are adding matching funds for a Parallel Optical Link Organisation. The partners are Hewlett-Packard Co, E I Du Pont de Nemours & Co, AMP Inc, SDL Inc and the University of Southern California and the aim is to develop optical interconnect components with 10 to 20 channels, each operating at a 1Gbps data rate. Hewlett-Packard will will be responsible for an optoelectronic multichip module including vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers, high-speed photodetectors, high-speed electronic components, polymer waveguide circuits and module packaging, and will co-ordinate the consortium activities. DuPont will provide polymeric materials and optical- interconnect- device expertise using its Polyguide polymeric integrated optic waveguide technology. AMP, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania maker of electrical and electronic interconnects will provide fibre-to-polymer connectors and planar-polymer optical circuits. SDL Inc, which makes high-power laser diodes and laser-diode arrays, will work with Hewlett to develop an optical-transmitter module based on SDL’s high-performance edge-emitting laser technology. And the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California will design the link adaptor and host interface chip sets to interface the optoelectronic module to a host computer.
