Circuits for silicon photonics on a “macrochip”

Recent advances in silicon photonics bring significant benefits to "macrochip" grids made of arrayed chips. Such configurations have global interconnects long enough to benefit from the high speed, low energy, and high bandwidth density of optics. In this paper we consider the constraints of large macrochip systems, and explore modulator drivers and photodetector receivers that match those constraints. We show measured results from a recent 90 nm testchip intended to mate with optical components.