  Optical interconnect has emerged as the front-runner to replace electrical
interconnect especially for off-chip communication. However, a major drawback
with optical interconnects is the need for photodetectors and amplifiers at the
receiver, implemented usually by direct bandgap semiconductors and analog CMOS
circuits, leading to large energy consumption and slow operating time. In this
article, we propose a new optical interconnect architecture that uses a
magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) at the receiver side that is switched by
femtosecond laser pulses. The state of the MTJ can be sensed using simple
digital CMOS latches, resulting in significant improvement in energy
consumption. Moreover, magnetization in the MTJ can be switched on the
picoseconds time-scale and our design can operate at a speed of 5 Gbits/sec for
a single link.
