Breaking free of electrical constraints

Photonic interconnections provide a viable means to overcome the fundamental limitations imposed upon computer system topologies by electrical signaling. Direct board-to-board (or assembly-to-assembly) signaling, without need of a backplane, provides multiple points of connectivity between adjacent electronic complexes while obviating the need to route all board-level signals to and through a central connector choke point. Optical busses can permit full-speed signaling between multiple chips, memory units, or processing units without requiring an active control plane. One-to-many and all-to-all photonic broadcasts greatly simplify multi-processor and multi-core system design.