Polymer optical interconnect technology (POINT) optoelectronic packaging and interconnect for board and backplane applications

The Polymer Optical interconnect Technology (POINT) is a collaborative program among GE, Honeywell, AMP, AlliedSignal, Columbia University and University of California at San Diego (UCSD), sponsored by ARPA, in developing affordable optoelectronic packaging and interconnect technologies for board- and backplane-level optical interconnect applications. The POINT program leverages on the existing electronic design, processing, fabrication and MCM packaging technologies to optoelectronic packaging. The POINT program also incorporates several state-of-the-art optoelectronic technologies that include: high speed VCSEL for multi-channel data transmission; flexible optical polymer waveguides and low-loss polymers for board and backplane interconnects; low-cost diffractive optical elements (DOE) for board-to-backplane interconnect; and use of molded MT-type connectors to reduce weight and size. In addition, to further reduce design and fabrication cycle times, CAD tools for multimode optical waveguide modelling, and for mechanical modelling of optoelectronic packaging will be employed to aid the technology development.