A low power-dissipation gigabit-per-second optical interconnection data link was realized using field programmable gate array(FPGA).In order to reduce system cost,electrical time division multiplexing(ETDM) was adopted to accomplish virtual parallel data transmission in a single fiber.Physical layer bandwidth of the data link is 1 056 Mbit/s.Sustained throughput of 545 Mbit/s was achieved at the data-link layer.The application layer throughput was 300 Mbit/s.The system power dissipation was reduced 50 percent by means of proper device selection,dynamic power management,and low-power coding.