Waveguide strategies for optical interconnect on CMOS

Optical waveguides offer a viable solution to the imminent global interconnect problem in CMOS integrated circuits. Great care needs to be taken in choosing the design space and the design primitives to be adopted. It is shown that the extremes of high and low refractive index contrasts are far from optimum and that visible wavelengths offer advantages. Design primitives that can achieve acceptable performance, cost and reliability targets, are proposed.