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Optics has the fundamental capability of dramatically improving computer performance via the reduction of capacitance for intrinsic high bandwidth communications and low power usage. Yet optical devices have not displaced silicon VLSI in any measure to date. The reason is clear. When placed into systems, the optical devices have not had significantly greater performance in equally complex information processing circuits and similarly low manufacturing cost. An approach demonstrated here uses the same system integration techniques that have been successful for silicon electronics, only applied to optics. Essential for creation of very large scale integrated optics (VLSIO), with over 50,000 high speed logic gates per square centimeter, is a new class of ultra high confinement (UHC) waveguides. These waveguides are created with high index difference (as high as 4.0 to 1.0) between guide and cladding. The waveguides have been demonstrated with infrared cross sections less than 5% of a square free space wavelength. These waveguides can be manufactured today only in the mid-infrared, but the concepts should scale to the near-infrared as lithography improves. Waveguide corners have been designed and demonstrated with a bend radius of less than one free space wavelength. Resonators have been designed which have over 100 times smaller volume than VCSELs, yet efficiently inter-connected laterally in high densities. A connector to the UHC waveguides has been developed and demonstrated using diffractive optical element arrays on the back side of the substrate. The coupler arrays can allow up to 10,000 Gaussian beam connections per square centimeter. This connectivity also has advantages for low cost three dimensional packaging for reduced cost and thermal dissipation. Experimental results on the above concepts and components are presented.
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