Optical clock system with optical time delay means

Details Optical clock system with optical time delay means Optical clock system with optical time delay means

1989-05-15

1990-09-25

Nelms, David C.

Radiant energy

Photocells; circuits and apparatus

Optical or pre-photocell system

350 9615, H01J 516, G02B 626

Patent

active

049595407

ABSTRACT:
An optical clock system for high-performance computing systems uses unique methods of clock generation, delay timing, and electrical clock conversion to eliminate clock skew due to passive circuit elements. There is provided a direct optical connection to active devices in the computing system thereby eliminating the transmission of electrical clock signals through passive transmission elements. The optical clock system eliminates several stages of clock drivers and, as a result, is capable of reducing clock skew due to active circuit skew as well. In one embodiment, an optical pulse timing operator (10) produces ultrashort pulses which are equally divided by an 1-by-N splitter (16) into N optical fibers (18), where N depends on the number of clock signals required. Each fiber has a different length, resulting in different propagation times for the optical pulses. The light from each of the N fibers are again split into M fibers by N 1-by-M splitters (20), where M depends upon the number of distribution points for the clock. The N.times.M fibers are regrouped to form a bundle of N fibers, and these M fiber bundles are then coupled to each module (22) where the delayed optical signals are converted into the appropriate electrical clock signals.

REFERENCES:
patent: 4182935 (1980-01-01), Chown
patent: 4515428 (1985-05-01), Findakly
patent: 4518858 (1985-05-01), Southard
patent: 4671605 (1987-06-01), Soref
patent: 4743113 (1988-05-01), Jubinski
patent: 4775210 (1988-10-01), Fioretti
patent: 4870269 (1989-09-01), Jeunhomme et al.

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