Abstract
Optical random access memories (RAMs) have been conceived as high-bandwidth alternatives of their electronic counterparts, raising expectations for ultra-fast operation that can resolve the ns-long electronic RAM access bottleneck. However, experimentally demonstrated optical RAMs have been limited to up to 5GHz only, failing to validate the speed advantages over electronics. In this Letter, we demonstrate the first all-optical RAM cell that performs both Write and Read functionalities at 10Gb/s, reporting on a 100% speed increase compared to state-of-the-art optical RAM demonstrations. To achieve this, the proposed RAM cell deploys a monolithically integrated InP optical Flip-Flop and a Semiconductor optical amplifier-Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (SOA-MZI) On/Off switch configured to operate as a strongly saturated differentially-biased access gate. Error-free operation is demonstrated at 10Gb/s for both Write and Read operations with 6.2dB and 0.4dB power, respectively, achieving the fastest reported RAM cell functionalities.
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