High-Speed Optical Interconnect for Multimedia Systems

As the performance of multimedia systems continuously improves, it has become apparent that metal interconnects will be increasingly difficult to provide sufficient bandwidth at the board or the backplane levels. Optical interconnect, with its almost unlimited bandwidth, have the potential to solve the I/O bottle-neck problem currently faced by many multimedia systems. In this chapter, several promising optical interconnect architectures and technologies will be discussed and the potential advantages and challenges of using optical interconnects in a high performance multimedia system will be investigated.