CAREER: Mixed-Signal Photonic Integrated Circuits for Energy-Efficient High-Speed Data Interfaces

建议编号：1454411职业：用于高能效高速数据接口的混合信号光子学集成电路Vishal Saxena(博伊西州立大学)摘要：这项研究利用光子学来满足政府、行业和消费者对数据带宽日益增长的需求，同时显著减少互联网云使用带来的日益巨大的能源消耗。Photonics使用光而不是电子来执行各种功能，如信息处理和传输。虽然我们中的大多数人仍然在办公室工作，亲自与朋友见面，但移动和网络设备的能力已经实现了大规模的在线业务和社交交易的增长。互联网及其基于云的服务被用于生产系统、银行、娱乐、社交、信息分发和研究。由此产生的信息积累正在推动“大数据”的兴起，以及帮助分析师发现金融趋势、预防疾病、打击犯罪和提高研究质量的强大关联工具。随着数据呈指数级增长，我们越来越多地将内容放在云中，以便随时随地轻松访问。所有这些数据传输都使用了惊人的能量。为了在降低数据中心能耗的同时将数据容量提高十倍以上，这项研究将研究新型混合数据通信接口，使用光而不是电子来处理和传输更高速度的数据。这些混合光子互连实现的潜在爆炸性数据速率增长可能会带来几个变革性的应用，例如未来的亿级数据中心、太比特速度的局域网，以及面向大数据应用的大规模并行计算。这些混合光子互连不仅将对半导体行业产生广泛影响，还将对美国的能源可持续性和安全产生影响，因为更节能的计算系统将减少互联网云的碳足迹。此外，为了让学生具备推动未来技术的必要技能，该项目包括了一个强有力的教育部分。将采用互动学习方法教授电子电路，并将光子学引入集成电路设计。该项目还包括一个高中推广计划，每年为高中生举办一次以可持续发展智能环境为主题的为期一周的夏令营，致力于在集成电路设计中培养女性和少数群体的代表性。到目前为止，利用集成光子电路和光学互连的技术开发主要集中在使用硅光子调制器的二进制通信上。为了使未来的光互连能够实现更高的数据速率和能效，研究人员必须重新考虑混合集成电路范例。一个重要的技术推动因素是集成光子器件的高速信号处理能力。研究方法将首先开发具有标准单元库和紧凑模型的光子设计套件，以使光子器件能够大规模集成到混合集成电路中。研究人员将把光子器件的高速光域信号处理应用到新的电路结构中，利用电子和光子元件之间的协同作用，形成混合信号光子体系结构。接下来，为了利用二进制互连以外的光子学；研究人员将开发新型混合信号光子数据转换器，他们将使用这种转换器来演示一种先进的调制收发信机架构，该架构可扩展到每秒太比特的数据速率，能耗降低数量级。研究成果将使集成电路研究人员拥有新的光子学专业知识，以应对纳米级技术设计挑战，在纳米级技术设计挑战中，数据传输瓶颈制约系统性能。光子设计套件将降低行业壁垒，帮助促进光电子在集成电路中的应用；由此产生的混合信号光子数据转换器架构将通过实现大于10 GHz的采样率而树立新的范例，与现有的仅支持互补金属氧化物半导体(CMOS)的架构相比，能耗将显著降低。研究人员将通过为新的cmos光子学集成电路设计研究生课程开发在线教育材料，以及通过国际期刊和会议来广泛传播项目成果。

Proposal No.: 1454411 CAREER: Mixed Signal Photonics Integrated Circuits for Energy-Efficient High-Speed Data InterfacesVishal Saxena (Boise State University)Abstract: This research harnesses photonics to satisfy ever-growing government, industry, and consumer needs for data bandwidth, while significantly reducing the increasingly voracious energy footprint that accompanies Internet cloud use. Photonics uses light instead of electronics to perform a variety of functions such as information processing and transfer. While most of us still work in offices and meet friends in person, mobile and networking device capability has enabled massive online business and social transaction growth. The Internet and its cloud-based services are used for production systems, banking, entertainment, social interaction, information distribution and research. Resulting information accumulation is fueling the rise of "big data," as well as the powerful correlation tools that help analysts spot financial trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and improve quality of research. More and more, we put content in the cloud for easy access from anywhere and at any time, with data growing exponentially. All this data transfer uses a surprising amount of energy. To reduce data center energy consumption while increasing data capacity by over ten fold, this research will investigate novel hybrid data communication interfaces, using light rather than electrons to process and transfer data at higher speeds. The potentially explosive increase in data rates enabled by these hybrid photonic interconnects could lead to several transformative applications, such as future exascale data centers, terabit speed local area networks, and massively-parallel computing for big data applications. These hybrid photonic interconnects will not only have a broad impact on the semiconductor industry, but also US energy sustainability and security, as more energy-efficient computing systems would reduce carbon footprint of the Internet cloud. Further, to prepare students for the workforce with the necessary skills to drive future technology, the project includes a strong educational component. Interactive learning methods will be employed to teach electronic circuits and to bring photonics to integrated circuit design. The project also incorporates a high school outreach program, with an annual Smart Environments for Sustainability-themed one-week summer camp for high school students that commits to fostering women and minority group representation in integrated circuit design.Technology development leveraging integrated photonic circuits and optical interconnects has thus far largely focused on binary communication using silicon photonic modulators. To enable future optical interconnects for higher data rates and energy-efficiency, researchers must reconsider the hybrid integrated circuit paradigm. An important technology enabler is the high-speed signal processing capability of integrated photonic devices. The research approach will first be to develop a photonic design kit with standard cell libraries and compact models to enable large scale integration of photonic devices into hybrid integrated circuits. Researchers will employ photonic device high-speed optical domain signal processing into novel circuit configurations, exploit synergistic interaction between electronic and photonic components, and form a mixed-signal photonic architecture. Next, to exploit photonics beyond binary interconnects; researchers will develop novel mixed-signal photonic data converters, which they will use to demonstrate an advanced modulation transceiver architecture that is scalable to terabits per second data rates with order-of-magnitude lower energy consumption. Research outcomes will empower integrated circuit researchers by equipping them with a new photonics expertise to tackle nano-scaled technology design challenges, where data transfer bottlenecks constrain system performance. The photonic design kit will lower industry barriers to help facilitate photonics adoption into integrated circuits; resulting mixed-signal photonic data converter architectures will set a new paradigm by achieving greater than 10 GHz sampling rates with significantly reduced energy consumption over existing complementary metal?oxide?semiconductor (CMOS)-only architectures. Researchers will broadly disseminate project results by developing online educational material for a new CMOS photonics integrated circuit design graduate course, and through international journals and conferences.