Silicon Photonics for Short‐Reach Interconnects: Progress in High‐Bandwidth and Energy‐Efficient Optical I/O

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving unprecedented demands on computing infrastructure, where increasing data movement between accelerators, memory, and networking components has become a critical challenge for system scalability. Silicon‐photonic optical interconnects have emerged as a promising technology to overcome the bandwidth density, energy efficiency, and scalability limitations of conventional electrical links in next‐generation AI clusters. Meeting these demands requires coordinated optimization across optical devices, electronic circuits, packaging technologies, and system architectures. This review analyzes the development of silicon‐photonic optical I/O technologies, highlighting their performance trade‐offs, deployment challenges, and future opportunities for scalable, energy‐efficient optical interconnect architectures for AI computing.

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Publication Details

Journal
Laser & Photonics Review
Published
2026-09-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.71894
Primary Topic
Photonic and Optical Devices
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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Silicon Photonics for Short‐Reach Interconnects: Progress in High‐Bandwidth and Energy‐Efficient Optical I/O

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Silicon Photonics for Short‐Reach Interconnects: Progress in High‐Bandwidth and Energy‐Efficient Optical I/O

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article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving unprecedented demands on computing infrastructure, where increasing data movement between accelerators, memory, and networking components has become a critical challenge for system scalability. Silicon‐photonic optical interconnects have emerged as a promising technology to overcome the bandwidth density, energy efficiency, and scalability limitations of conventional electrical links in next‐generation AI clusters. Meeting these demands requires coordinated optimization across optical devices, electronic circuits, packaging technologies, and system architectures. This review analyzes the development of silicon‐photonic optical I/O technologies, highlighting their performance trade‐offs, deployment challenges, and future opportunities for scalable, energy‐efficient optical interconnect architectures for AI computing.

Laser & Photonics Review
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Fudan University (CN), Shanghai Zhangjiang Laboratory (CN), Institute of Semiconductors (CN), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Industry, innovation and infrastructure
Openalex Percentile: Top 20%
Photonic and Optical Devices
DOISourceOpenAlex
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