In this paper, various trade-offs for the design of short-range optical interconnects for on-board communication in a high-performance computer (HPC) will be discussed. Energy consumption and bandwidth requirements of the components, which are used for the realization of an optical link in future highly adaptive energy-efficient computers, will be estimated based on the energy consumption and bandwidth trends of super computers. A scalable solution and its performance in terms of energy efficiency and bandwidth will be discussed. Results regarding all sub-components of such an optical on-board link are presented including optical components, packaging, and electrical components will be presented in the paper.