Information Efficient High-speed Signalling for Intelligent Computing

让我们面对现实吧——我们与世界其他地方永久连接的愿望是昂贵的。过去，我们只愿意与亲人分享简短的对话，而现在，我们通过分享视频、语音和文件等内容来开展业务。显然，如此大的数据是由数据中心处理的，这些数据中心每年传输和处理的数据达到ztb。去年，数据中心消耗了416太瓦，未来前景不容乐观。显然，当我们考虑到碳足迹和冷却成本时，这是令人担忧的。联邦组织正在考虑采取严厉措施——2014年匈牙利对互联网征税的讨论表明了形势的严重性。这种措施可能抵消冷却成本，但不会解决环境影响。因此，没有什么可以替代节能互联技术，它可以传输数据，消耗更少的电力，也产生更少的热量。拟议的研究将探索实现这一目标的方法。首先，我们将使链接“智能”，允许它根据需要分配资源。这需要重新考虑链路设计-采用ADC（模拟数字转换器）为基础的数字并行处理是必要的。其次，寻址诸如码间干扰（ISI）之类的信道损伤会增加功耗和复杂性。我们将建设性地使用ISI，它不仅简化了均衡过程，还使我们能够实现更低的误码率。第三，我们需要找到一种智能的方式来发送数据位。传统上，用信号的幅度来表示传输的数据。显然，发送多个比特需要更高的幅度，这是无法承受的。因此，我们需要探索其他调制技术。最后，链接需要是智能的，以利用传输数据中的“内容”。总的来说，这些想法的探索将在后摩尔定律时代继续提高速度和能源效率，以帮助设计未来的数据中心

Let's face it - our desire for perpetual connectivity to rest of the world is expensive. Unlike old days when we would be just happy to share a short conversation to our loved ones, these days we conduct business by sharing content including video, voice and files. Obviously, such large data is handled by data centers that transfers and process zettabytes of data every year. Last year, data centers consumed 416 Terawatts and future looks ominous. Obviously, it is alarming when we consider carbon footprint and cooling cost. Federal organizations are considering drastic measures - discussion of internet taxing Hungary in 2014 indicates the gravity of the situation. Such measure may offset the cooling cost but would not address the environment impact. Therefore, there is no substitute to energy efficient interconnect technology that can transfer data consuming lot less electricity and also generates less heat. The proposed research will be exploring ways to enable that. First, we will make the links for `intelligent' by allowing it to allocate resources according to the need. This requires rethinking the link design - adoption of ADC (analog to digital converter) based digital parallel processing is necessary. Second, addressing channel impairments such as inter symbol interference (ISI) increases power consumption and complexity. We will constructively use the ISI that not only simplifies the equalization process, it also allows us to achieve lower BER. Third, we need to find an intelligent way to send the data bits. Traditionally, amplitude of a signal was used represents transmitted data. Obviously, sending multiple bits demands higher amplitude that is not affordable. Therefore, we need to explore other modulation techniques. Finally, links need to be intelligent to take advantage of the `content' in the transmitted data. Overall, exploration of these ideas will continue speed and energy efficiency improvement in post Moore's law era to help design future data centers