Optimization of transmitter and receiver design for optoelectronic computing

Optoelectronic computing systems that combine electronic circuits with optical interconnect elements have been considered for many applications where the cost of communication is higher than that of computation. We have previously developed a method of evaluating the performance of the optoelectronic interface, referred to as a photonics layer, and examined various transmitter and receiver technologies separately. In this paper, we report our recent results in the design optimization of the overall photonics layer. We examine the total electrical power dissipated in both the transmitter and the receiver modules, and optimize the receiver configurations to achieve a minimum electrical power dissipation at a given bit rate.