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Optical interconnect technology has been adopted for over half a century. Today approximately one billion optical connectors and interconnects are deployed annually, and the growth is expected to increase as more technologies incorporate optical and photonic components. Although its basic function (the conveyance of photons over a channel) has remained the same, optical interconnect has been constantly evolving and innovating over the decades to push the boundaries of performance. In this paper we report on the evolution of optical interconnect technology from its initial applications in long haul telecommunications links to its future application to quantum networks.

We report on the design and development of a hyperscale integrated photonics eco-system platform developed to allow validation of micro-photonic devices in a data center environment. European research partners collaborated with Japanese PETRA spin-out AIO Core to demonstrate singlemode and multimode silicon photonic micro-transceivers.

We present a study on an all-optical multicasting switching matrix design based on semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) technology for all-optical GRID computing. The technique has not only the capability to control the degree of multicasting optically but also to perform all-optical switching with the use of an N×N AWG. Experimental results have shown the design's capability to multicast an incoming 10 Gbit/s optical signal onto 16 outgoing signals by using cross gain modulation in a single SOA. A second SOA is also included in the design as a 2R regenerator.