An optical clock distribution network for gigascale integration

Author

Mule, Anthony V. ; Schultz, Stephen M. ; Gaylord, Thomas K. ; Meindl, James D.

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Res. Center, Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

6

Lastpage

8

Abstract

A novel system-level model describing a printed wiring board-level, high-fanout, curved aperture optical waveguide H-tree network using volume grating focusing couplers is presented. The intra-chip optical network globally distributes an optical signal to monolithic CMOS receivers for local clock distribution. An estimation for the available optical output power as a function of distribution fanout is presented. Assuming -2 dB optical loss per y-junction, a distribution fanout of 256 can be achieved for an optical input power of 1.23 W

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; clocks; microprocessor chips; optical couplers; optical interconnections; optical waveguides; 1.23 W; fanout; gigascale integration; monolithic CMOS receiver; optical clock distribution network; optical waveguide H-tree network; system-level model; volume grating focusing coupler; Apertures; Clocks; Gratings; Integrated optics; Optical fiber networks; Optical receivers; Optical waveguides; Power system modeling; Semiconductor device modeling; Wiring;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Interconnect Technology Conference, 2000. Proceedings of the IEEE 2000 International

Conference_Location

Burlingame, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6327-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IITC.2000.854081

Filename

854081