Patent ID: 7366368

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: an optical bus to interconnect processors of a multiprocessor system; at least one electrical-to-optical (“E-O”) transmitter coupled to receive electrical signals from one of the processors and to convert the electrical signals to first optical signals to be guided onto the optical bus; optical-to-electrical (“O-E”) receivers coupled to receive second optical signals from the optical bus and to convert the second optical signals to electrical signals for the processors; and first optical couplers coupling the at least one E-O transmitter and the O-E receivers to the optical bus, wherein the at least one E-O transmitter comprises: an input port to receive a continuous wave (“CW”) optical input; an optical splitter to split the CW optical input into a first portion and a second portion; a modulator to modulate the electrical signals onto the first portion of the CW optical input; and an output port to output the second portion of the CW optical input to a next E-O transmitter of a next processor.