Reconfigurable 100 Gb/s silicon photonic network-on-chip [invited]

Optical interconnects have the potential to realize a scalable intra- and inter-chip communication infrastructure. They can meet the large bandwidth capacity and stringent latency requirements in a power-efficient fashion. Integration of photonics on silicon provides a path to a low-cost and highly scalable platform for this application. Here, we report an intra-chip 10 × 10 Gb/s optical link based on a large-scale silicon photonic integrated circuit with 72 functional elements. Furthermore, the optical circuit is reconfigurable as a 10 × 10 switch or a broadcasting network. This demonstration verifies the feasibility of implementing a compact high-capacity wavelength division multiplexing interconnect on a chip, which also enables many new advanced optic network functionalities on a chip scale.

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