Low power, high speed multi-channel chip-to-chip interface using dielectric waveguide

Abstract

The demands for advanced interconnects expands to catch up with the increase in achievable IC speed. The old-established technologies, the electrical interconnects, are near at ends owing to its fundamental limitation caused by the skin effect. And the optical interconnects believed as a strong alternative are still under restrictions in terms of tremendous replacement cost. We have designed a completely novel type of chip-to-chip interconnects. A new interconnect, E-TUBE, would be a cost-effective/low power solution to high speed data communication. The CMOS transceiver operating at 60GHz passband transmits and receives data through the multiple dielectric waveguide channels. E-TUBE is aiming for IEEE P802.3bj KR standard and be a promising solution to the overall short reach chip-to-chip interface. A return loss is under 10dB in a frequency range of 53 to 77 GHz. The insertion loss at the center frequency of the passband is found to be 15dB for 1m waveguide. The bandwidth of the E-TUBE channel is adequately achieved to transmit PAM4 28Gbps data at center frequency of 62GHz. The area occupied by the one E-TUBE channel is 3.1mm x 1.5mm.