Patent ID: 7613026

Claim:
A method of operating a system memory, comprising: providing first and second memory modules having longitudinal axes in an approximately parallel arrangement on a carrier substrate, and a controller spaced apart from the first memory module along a direction opposite from the second memory module and orthogonal to the longitudinal axes, the second memory module having an optical transmitter/receiver unit operatively coupled to a memory device thereof, the first and second memory modules being staged on a carrier substrate such that the second memory module is offset from the first memory module along the longitudinal axis of the second memory module by an amount sufficient to provide a first optical path for optical signals between the controller and the optical transmitter/receiver unit of the second memory module; projecting a first optical signal along the first optical path to the optical transmitter/receiver unit of the second memory module; receiving the first optical signal; determining a memory address corresponding to the first optical signal; and accessing a data value from the corresponding memory address of the memory device.