Prismatic Coupling Structure for Intrachip Global Communication

Metal wires for global communication on integrated circuits have become problematic as device integration densities scale with rapid advancements in CMOS technology. They may not be able to deliver the growing bandwidth requirements of future microprocessors. Optical interconnect technologies may provide a solution to meet this challenge and extend Moore's law. In this paper, a novel guided-wave optical interconnect fabric aiming to replace the slow global metal interconnections is proposed and analyzed. The reflection-mode multiple-quantum-well-modulator-based optical interconnection approach is projected to achieve high coupling efficiency and be compatible with standard CMOS processes. The key notion is a prismatic coupling structure that is embedded in the optical waveguide and therefore has a very small footprint in the circuit. Ray-trace and finite-difference time-domain simulation results predict high coupling efficiency of this structure.