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Invited Paper
The various arguments for introducing optical interconnections electrical interconnections, at least as we know them today,
to silicon CMOS chips are summarized, and the challenges for do not scale to keep up with the devices.
optical, optoelectronic, and integration technologies are discussed. Problems with scaling electrical interconnections have
Optics could solve many physical problems of interconnects,
including precise clock distribution, system synchronization (al- been known for some time, at least implicitly. For example,
lowing larger synchronous zones, both on-chip and between chips), essentially all telecommunications has moved away from
bandwidth and density of long interconnections, and reduction of electrical lines for long-distance traffic because the loss at
power dissipation. Optics may relieve a broad range of design high frequencies in electrical wires is too high. Also, inside
problems, such as crosstalk, voltage isolation, wave reflection, computer systems, the buses that carry information from one
impedance matching, and pin inductance. It may allow continued
scaling of existing architectures and enable novel highly intercon- part of the system to another run at rates much slower than
nected or high-bandwidth architectures. No physical breakthrough the clock rate on the chips because of a variety of problems
is required to implement dense optical interconnects to silicon with electrical interconnects, including wave reflections on
chips, though substantial technological work remains. Cost is a the lines. The existence of interconnect scaling problems
significant barrier to practical introduction, though revolutionary has been highlighted recently because of the roadmaps
approaches exist that might achieve economies of scale. An Ap-
pendix analyzes scaling of on-chip global electrical interconnects, created by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA)
including line inductance and the skin effect, both of which impose [1]. These roadmaps show that even on semiconductor chips
significant additional constraints on future interconnects. themselves, where interconnects are short, plentiful, and in-
Keywords—Off-chip wiring, on-chip wiring, optical intercon- expensive by any absolute measure, the global interconnects
nects, quantum-well modulator, vertical-cavity surface-emitting will become very difficult. It is already the case for electrical
laser. interconnections between chips that the performance is
dominated by the interconnection medium rather than the
devices at either end; sometime in the next decade, this will
I. INTRODUCTION
also be the case for many connections on chips.
Digital processing of information requires nonlinear There are several possible approaches to such intercon-
devices and circuits for logical functions and storage, and nection scaling problems, and likely all of these will be used
also interconnections to carry the information from one to some degree. Architectures could be changed to minimize
place to another. The continuing exponential reduction in interconnection. Design approaches could put increasing
feature sizes on electronic chips, known as Moore’s law [1], emphasis on the interconnection layout. Signaling on wires
leads to ever larger numbers of faster devices at lower cost could be significantly improved though the use of a variety
per device. This evolution is shifting the balance between of techniques, such as equalization [2]–[4]. Most important
devices and interconnection in digital processing systems; for this discussion is a fourth approach—changing the
physical means of interconnection. Optics is arguably a
very interesting and different physical approach to intercon-
Manuscript received October 22, 1999; revised February 29, 2000. This nection that can in principle address most, if not all, of the
work was supported by the Interconnect Focus Research Center (funded by
the Semiconductor Industry Association and DARPA through MARCO), by problems encountered in electrical interconnections.
the Semiconductor Research Corp., by DARPA under Grant MDA972-98-1- It should be emphasized here that the difficulties of elec-
0002, and by the University of New Mexico. trical interconnections are not simply ones of scaling of the
The author is with Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
94305-4085 USA. raw capacity of the interconnection system. There are a va-
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9219(00)05247-6. riety of other difficulties that are not so readily quantified