title: Ultra-low-energy all-CMOS modulator integrated with driver.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Sun Microsystems Physical Sciences Center, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. Xuezhe.zheng@sun.com
authors.forename: Xuezhe
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Jon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lexau
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Hiren
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Thacker
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pinguet
authors.forename: Attila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mekis
authors.forename: Guoliang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Amberg
authors.forename: Nathaniel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pinckney
authors.forename: Kannan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Raj
authors.forename: Ron
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: John E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Cunningham
authors.forename: Ashok V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Krishnamoorthy