Realization of ultra-low power I/O

This paper summarizes the exploratory work conducted at IBM which seeks to reduce electrical I/O power consumption to facilitate both power distribution and device cooling for future exascale computing systems. The development of novel low-loss dielectric materials was coupled with design for performance to achieve low channel loss by minimizing reflections and energy dissipation due to non-ideal current return paths. A printed circuit board was fabricated and tested, with results confirming a 20% reduction of channel loss at 10GHz when compared to currently leading commercial materials. This 3dB improvement in loss for a 15dB channel, can offer a 50% I/O power reduction when used with power scalable driving/receiving circuits.