Connection cube modules for optical backplanes and fiber networks

A modular free-space optical system, called the connection cube, for connecting arrays of electro-optic transceivers and fiber-array connectors is presented. The connection cube module provides bidirectional data transfer between four processing nodes on a cube face and can be used as a basic building block for optical backplanes and interconnect networks. An experimental system for connecting four processing nodes is presented and used to examine alignment and packaging issues. An analysis of the dimensional requirements and scaling capability for systems based on this module is conducted. This analysis shows that, when the connection cube module is adapted to vertical-cavity surface-emitting-laser-based pointto- point fiber-array links currently under development, it can connect up to 14 processing nodes with an aggregate data transfer capacity of 112 Gbits/s with 19.6-W power consumption.