A Surface Emitting Laser Amplifier for Parallel Optical Buses

There has been a growing demand to increase the throughput of computer systems. To meet this demand, we have been considering a massive parallel processing computer using a space division multiplex optical bus. In this scheme, optical signal data are transmitted from one board to another without E/O and O/E repeaters. Then, the parallel optical bus system requires laser amplifiers for vertical input/output beams, in order to compensate for tapped powers. Surface emitting or vertical transmission laser amplifiers1) have been little studied, to our knowledge, though many investigations of the vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and photodiodes necessary for such a system are currently in progress. Accordingly we focus on a new structure for a vertical transmission optical amplifier as a key device to realize the parallel optical bus for massive parallel processing computers.