Title :
Can RF Help CMOS Processors? [Topics in Circuits for Communications]
Author :
Socher, Eran ; Chang, Mau-Chung Frank
Author_Institution :
Univ. of California, Los Angeles
fDate :
8/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
Digital circuits implemented in CMOS technology have been the workhorses of high performance computer processors for more than a decade, following Moore´s law with exponentially increasing integration and performance. Driven by lower cost, increasing performance, and mixed-signal benefits, CMOS technology also has found increasing use in analog, and more recently, RF applications. Now, with transistor performance still improving, wires are becoming the limiting factor for speed and performance by imposing limits on communication bandwidth and latency between processing cores and memories, both off- and on-chip. Communication and circuit techniques, developed mainly for narrow band-wireless RF communication can help increase the wired communication speed in digital systems. This approach, dubbed RF Interconnect (RF-I), picks up speed for on-board and on-chip applications, changing the communication paradigm from the old parallel unidirectional time-shared bus to new transmission lines enabling reconfigurable communication using both frequency and code division multiple access techniques.
Keywords :
CMOS digital integrated circuits; code division multiple access; frequency division multiple access; integrated circuit interconnections; radiofrequency integrated circuits; CMOS processors; Moores law; RF applications; band-wireless RF communication; code division multiple access techniques; digital circuits; digital systems; dubbed RF Interconnect; frequency division multiple access technique; on-board application; on-chip applications; parallel unidirectional time-shared bus; reconfigurable communication; wired communication speed; Application software; CMOS digital integrated circuits; CMOS process; CMOS technology; Costs; Digital circuits; High performance computing; Moore´s Law; Radio frequency; Wires;
Journal_Title :
Communications Magazine, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/MCOM.2007.4290322