Comparison of the Performance Characteristics of Futurebus+ with an Optical Backplane

The use of optical interconnects for backplane and bus applications in multiboard processor systems has been considered by a number of investigators.1,2 However, most of these analyses have not evaluated the impact of optics on specific bus configurations. In this presentation we evaluate the performance of optics in a Futurebus+backplane, and show that considerable reduction in data transfer delay can be obtained using existing electro-optic interface elements in an optical backplane. The significance of this result is that a substantial improvement of existing bus architectures can be achieved using a straight forward substitution of electro-optic components for electrical transceivers.</jats:p