Introduction of "Optical wiring" is expected to meet an explosion of information amount circulated through the future networks. Opto-electronics technology has a potential to solve the so-called interconnection crisis of conventional "Metallic wiring". However, a lot of problems have remained especially in respect of the device assembling and circuit packaging. In this paper, advantages of optical wiring will be discussed first. Then the present status of the optical circuit packaging

more »

... will be briefly overviewed. Finally Optical Surface Mount Technology (Optical SMT) which was proposed as a means to solve the board level interconnection problem will be introduced. Fig. 1 Allowable length vs. transmission rate in optical and electrical transmissions.