Ultra-low-energy all-CMOS modulator integrated with driver.
We report the first sub-picojoule per bit (400fJ/bit) operation of a silicon modulator intimately integrated with a driver circuit and embedded in a clocked digital transmitter. We show a wall-plug power efficiency below 400microW/Gbps for a 130nm SOI CMOS carrier-depletion ring modulator flip-chip integrated to a 90nm bulk Si CMOS driver circuit. We also demonstrate stable error-free transmission of over 1.5 petabits of data at 5Gbps over 3.5 days using the integrated modulator without closed-loop ring resonance tuning. Small signal measurements of the CMOS ring modulator, sans circuit, showed a 3dB bandwidth in excess of 15GHz at 1V of reverse bias, indicating that further increases in transmission rate and reductions of energy-per-bit is possible while retaining compatibility with CMOS drive voltages.
Zheng
Xuezhe
X
Sun Microsystems Physical Sciences Center, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. Xuezhe.zheng@sun.com
Lexau
Jon
J
Luo
Ying
Y
Thacker
Hiren
H
Pinguet
Thierry
T
Mekis
Attila
A
Li
Guoliang
G
Shi
Jing
J
Amberg
Philip
P
Pinckney
Nathaniel
N
Raj
Kannan
K
Ho
Ron
R
Cunningham
John E
JE
Krishnamoorthy
Ashok V
AV