Re: where can i find a fiber optic motherboard

Greetings Brandon:

Reference: Joseph C. Palais, Fiber Optic Communications,
4th edition, Prentice Hall, NJ, 1998

Fiber optic mother boards are still a laboratory research item and it will
be many years, if ever, before they are practical. The closest
integrated optics have come to the computer is in some advanced aerospace
systems that have computers with fiber optic back planes to interface the
computer electronics with the systems using fiber optic interconnects.

While fiber optics have many advantages over electronic circuits; including low
attenuation, great bandwidth and immunity from electrical noise, integrated optical
components are much to large for large scale integration (LSI). An optical
fiber waveguide core must be greater than the optical wavelength in diameter,
which typically is 1.3 micrometers (a micrometer is one millionth of a meter). The
core is than surrounded by a glass cladding layer that is more than 25
micrometers thick. These optical waveguide dimensions are huge when compared
to the metal interconnects on today's chips which are a few nanometers wide
(a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). Also, a typical laser diode chip
can be a few micrometers thick; however, they can be as much as 100 micrometers
in length, which is much to large for integration on the surface of an
integrated circuit chip for even medium scale integration (MSI). Also, silicon
remains the material of choice for LSI and VLSI circuits and
semiconductor lasers must be fabricated on much more expensive indium phosphide
(InP)or gallium arsenide(GaAs) substrates. There are InP and GaAs MSI chips available
that combine laser diodes and very high speed electronics; however, these are
typically used for input - output (IO) data transmission applications.

Researches around the world are developing vertical-cavity surface- emitting
lasers (VCSEL) that can be integrated vertically through a chip so that the
laser only uses a few square micrometers of surface area on the chip. VCSELs
can be used for data output from the chip and the laser energy could be
routed to other chips by micro-mirrors or fiber optic waveguides.

The reference is an excellent book for an introduction to fiber optic components
and communications and low cost paper back copies are available.

Best regards, Your Mad Scientist
Adrian Popa