Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1330321
80 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2021 planes, Board and Chip Interconnects," con- tains a very good summary up to 2008 and has 43 excellent references [2] . Opto-electronics printed circuits are based on HDI-microvia technology. In addition to the extremely high-frequency electrical signals, the need now includes the requirement for in- tegrated-optical waveguides. Finally, increas- ingly restrictive cost targets are compound- ing problems associated with today's smaller, denser, lighter and faster systems. When work- ing with opto-electronics, the need for the inte- grated waveguides is a major program. Photonics and Electrical Performance The performance of the conventional elec- trical interconnection technology is limited through the underlying physical properties. These are major hindrances to the five grow- ing challenges in advancing electronics: • Bandwidth of the internet for "packets"' and the growing volume of data (Figure 1) • Challenge of the future for "massively parallel computing cores" needing to communicate • Weight and power reduction for aerospace, space and automotive • Limited data-rate-length product caused by attenuation and dispersion, mainly affected by the high frequency skin effect and the frequency dependent loss factor tan of the dielectric materials • High number of single interconnects (pin-count) at component level and connector level caused by the limited data rate per single interconnect, and bringing chip I/Os up to the speed of the CPU The popularity of wireless devices and in- creasing applications that demand high band- width have placed an enormous burden on the Internet. Take, for example, the per-lane data rates of the PCIExpress (PCIe®) interface that has increased from 2.5 Gbps for Gen 1.0, to 8.0 Gbps for the current Gen 3.0, and is Figure 1: Internet bandwidth and IP traffic trends place a greater load on communication infrastructures. (Source: CISCO VNI, 2010)