Millimeter wave interchip communication

High performance multicore processors are approaching 256 GFLOPS and use and generate data at unprecedented rates. Much of the short range data transport between chips, however, is based on legacy LC transmission line infrastructure. Consequently, high performance, systems running memory intensive applications are able to utilize only a fraction of their available computational potential and remain idle for many clock cycles while waiting for data and instructions. A number of alternate short range transport technologies are listed in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, among which the most promising is inter-chip optical communication. This paper proposes that guided millimeter waves and high order digital modulation can be an effective alternate method by which processors and memory can exchange information with unprecedented bandwidth, power efficiency and I/O density competitiveness.