On-chip optics for data center interconnects. Prospects and limitations

Switch capacity in the DC is growing fast reaching 25Tb/s in a few years. The main limitations on these large ASICs become chip I/O and its power consumption. Conventional electrical I/O technology is reaching its limit with large switches and replacing it with on-chip optical I/O provides a low power, low cost and high BW solution. We present on-chip 2D silicon photonics and VCSEL-based solutions for DC networks.