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Optoelectronics Technology Consortium 32-Channel Parallel Fiber Optic Transmitter/Receiver Array Testbed

Casimer DeCusatis and Terrence Quinn, IBM Corp., Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and Petar Pepeljugoski, Daniel Kuchta, and John Crow, IBM Corp., Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

In the data communications industry, there are emerging requirements for a short distance (tens to hundreds of meters), high-speed (200 Mbit/sec-1 Gbit/sec) data bus for large computing environments, clustered parallel computing systems, and datacom switching. In response to these requirements, a parallel optical fiber interconnect has been developed by the Optoelectronics Technology Consortium (OETC), an ARPA-funded industry alliance including IBM, AT&T, Honeywell, and Lockheed Martin. This year, IBM completed testing of a 32-channel OETC fiber optic transmitter/receiver array in a product testbed, and announced future availability of a commercial product called "Jitney" based on the OETC prototype.