25Gb/s 3.6pJ/b and 15Gb/s 1.37pJ/b VCSEL-based optical links in 90nm CMOS

Future high-performance computing systems require sub-2pJ/bit power efficiencies at >;10Gb/s [1-2]. The best reported optical link efficiencies at these data rates are ≥2.5pJ/bit [1-4]. This paper describes two VCSEL-based multimode (MM) fiber optical links achieving sub-2pJ/bit power efficiency from 15Gb/s to 22Gb/s. The links realized in 90nm CMOS share the same TX but use two different RXs that explore different aspects of the power/BW/area tradeoff.