A feasible optical interconnect on a silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor chip demands epitaxial growth and monolithic integration of diode lasers and optical detectors with guided wave components on a (001) Si wafer, with all the components preferably operating in the wavelength range of 1.3–1.55 \mu \textm at room temperature. It is also desirable for the fabrication technique to be relatively simple and reproducible. Techniques demonstrated in the past for having optically and electrically pumped GaAs- and InP-based lasers on silicon include wafer bonding, selective area epitaxy, epitaxy on tilted substrates, and use of quantum dot or planar buffer layers. Here, we present a novel monolithic optical interconnect on a (001) Si substrate consisting of a III-nitride dot-in-nanowire array edge emitting diode laser and guided wave photodiode, with a planar SiO2/Si3N4 dielectric waveguide in between. The active devices are realized with the same nanowire heterostructure by one-step epitaxy. The electronic properties of the InN dot-like nanostructures and mode confinement and propagation in the nanowire waveguides have been modeled. The laser, emitting at the desired wavelength of 1.3~\mu \textm , with threshold current ~350 mA for a device of dimension 50~\mu \mathrm m\times 2 mm, has been characterized in detail. The detector exhibits a responsivity ~0.1 A/W at 1.3 \mu \textm . Operation of the entire optical interconnect via the dielectric waveguide is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]