Cheap optocouplers will bring optical fibers to the consumer market

Luxtera's announcement of its ability to combine germanium with a garden-variety SOI-SMOS process may have far-reaching implications for optical communications. The ability to deposit germanium on the wafer gives Luxtera the ability to cheaply integrate photodetectors directly onto the receiver electronics, simplifying assembly and test, and dropping the cost of the photodetector from about $1 to less than a penny. But the drop in BOM costs is equaled by the drop – or virtual elimination – of assembly and testing of the optocoupler assembly. Luxtera's goal is to drive the cost of a 10 GHz opto-coupler transmission scheme equivalent in price to a 100 MHz copper connection.

It's easy to see where the demand for cheap, high-speed interconnects comes from in our data-hungry world. One particularly attractive application is in the cabling between HDTV screens and their media drives. Luxtera CEO Alex Dickinson pointed out to me that current copper cable configurations limit the distance separating the drive from the big screen display to a 6m cable run. Going to optical fiber cabling removes the 6m restriction, giving big screen owners more freedom over how and where they position the screen – and opening up another large market for optocouplers.