Silicon Photonic Microring Links for High-Bandwidth-Density, Low-Power Chip I/O

Silicon photonic microrings have drawn interest in recent years as potential building blocks for high-bandwidth off-chip communication links. The authors analyze a terabit-per-second scale unamplified microring link based on current best-of-class devices. The analysis provides quantitative measures for the achievable energy efficiency and bandwidth density that could be realized within several years. The results highlight key device attributes that require significant advancement to realize sub-pJ/bit scale optical links.