Coming Challenges with Terabit-per-Second Data Communication

The growth in network data-rates is outpacing several constituent technologies, which is creating new challenges that cannot be readily overcome through simple extensions of previous approaches. This paper contributes by identifying new challenges facing the emerging data-communication protocols in the 400 Gb/s to 1 Tb/s range. Three particular challenges are presented along with their respective design implications and options: off-chip data interfaces; on-chip data busses; and off-chip buffering.