Alignability of optical interconnects

Abstract

Successful development, fabrication, and deployment of optical interconnects and computing systems depend on how easily the optical components and light beams can be aligned. An interconnection system difficult or time-consuming to align is costly to develop and may be unreliable. In this paper a probability theoretical framework is developed for analyzing the alignability, that is, the degree of difficulty of aligning the devices and the light beams, of a given optical interconnection system. The alignability measure is related to the other performance measures of an interconnect such as the power transfer efficiency, SNR, and the spatial and temporal bandwidths. The cost of the development and deployment of an optical processor or interconnection system can be estimated from knowledge of the alignability.