2-D Crystal Electronics for Energy-Efficient Terabit Communication Links

到2007年，在iPhone和iPad问世之前，美国ICT行业的碳足迹已经超过了航空业。此后，无线通信设备、社交媒体（facebook、Twitter、Linkedin等）和云计算的激增，加剧了ICT行业能源消耗的年增长率。我们现在在全球有2049个数据中心，消耗300亿瓦的电力，相当于30座核电站。在人均基础上，加拿大人在互联网使用和社交媒体网站注册方面领先于美国人。我们对无线通信的需求似乎永无止境。不幸的是，在所有的通信链路中，无线是效率最低的。计算的前景同样黯淡。在过去的12年中，缺乏晶体管亚阈值斜率改进和缺乏适当的电源电压缩放意味着微处理器已经成为功率密度的限制。虽然并行和多核微处理器架构暂时缓解了这个问题，但代价是增加了芯片间的通信和时钟频率，只有通过发明具有更陡峭的亚阈值斜率、更快的传输和更高的电流驱动能力的新晶体管，这将允许从0.3到0.1 V的电源工作，才能抑制或逆转功率密度趋势。

By 2007, before the iPhone and the iPad were introduced, the US ICT industry already had a larger carbon footprint than the airline industry. Since then, the proliferation of wireless communication devices, of social media (Faceboook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.) and cloud computing has only exacerbated the annual growth rate of energy consumption attributed to the ICT industry. We now have 2049 data centers worldwide which consume 30 billion Watts, the equivalent of 30 nuclear power stations. On a per capita basis, Canadians rank ahead of Americans in terms of Internet usage and enrollment in social media websites. Our appetite for wireless communication seems insatiable. Unfortunately, of all communication links, wireless is the least efficient. The outlook is just as bleak for computation. Lack of transistor subthreshold slope improvement and lack of appropriate supply voltage scaling during the last 12 years has meant that microprocessors have become power-density limited. While parallel and multicore microprocessor architectures have temporarily alleviated the problem at the expense of increased communication across the chip and stalled clock frequency, only by inventing new transistors with steeper subthreshold slopes, faster transport, and higher current driving capability, which will permit operation from 0.3 to 0.1 V supplies, will the power density trend be curbed or reversed.