Optical interconnects at the chip and board level: Challenges and solutions

Proceedings of the IEEE

Volumn 88, Issue 6, 2000, Pages 806-818

  Plant, David V ^a   Kirk, Andrew G ^a  

^a MCGILL UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Microoptics; Optical data links; Optical interconnects; Optical packaging; Optoelectronics

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000835270     PISSN: 00189219     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1109/5.867694     Document Type: Article

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61. David V. Plant (Member, IEEE) was bom in 1962 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University, Prividence, RI, in 1985. 1986. and 1989, respectively. From 1989 - 1993, he was a Research Engineer in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1993, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, PQ Canada, as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1997. His research interests include optoelectronic devices and packaging, fiberoptic technology, and parallel optical interconnects. He is the Major Project Leader of the Photonie Interconnection Systems major project, a project within the Canadian Institute for Télécommunications Research, a national center of excellence funded by NSERC. In 1996, Dr. Plant won the overall Best Teacher Award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Engineering Alumni Class of 51 ' Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Faculty of Engineering. He is a member of the OSA, and is the Technical Program Co-Chair for the Optics in Computing 2000 conference. Andrew G. Kirk (Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in physics from the University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K., in i989 and the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of London (King's Collage), London, U.K., in 1992. From 1992-1994 he held a Visiting Research Fellowship in Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics at the University of Tokyo. During that time he conducted research on reconfigurable optical interconnects for massively parallel computing systems, developing novel interconnection techniques and contributing to advances in the design of computer generated diffractive optical elements. In January 1994 he commenced work as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Applied Physics in the Brussels Free University, Belgium. He pursued several research topics including the design and analysis of compact free-space optical interconnection systems and novel fabrication techniques for anisotropic diffraciive optical elements. In 1996 he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University where he holds the position of Assistant Professor. His current research interest is in the development of parallel optical interconnects for high performance digital systems. He has made several advances in the design and packaging of free-space micro-optics for this application and has developed systems based on fiber image guides and optical fiber arrays. He is also active in the development of micro-optical and micro-electro-mechanical components for optical fiber communications.