Bulk-Si photonics technology for DRAM interface [Invited]

Byun, Hyunil; Bok, J. K.; Cho, Kwansik; Cho, Keunyeong; Choi, Hanmei; Choi, Jinyong; Choi, Seock Hwan; Han, Sangdeuk; Hong, Sanghyun; Hyun, Seok-Hun; Jeong, Taejin; Ji, Ho-Chul; Joe, In-Sung; Kim, Beomseok; Kim, Dong-Hyun; Kim, Jung-Hye; Jeong-Kyoum, Kim; Kim, Kiho; Kim, Seong-gu; Kong, Degui; Kuh, Bong Jin; Kwon, Hyeokshin; Lee, Beomsuk; Lee, Hocheol; Lee, Sang Hoon; Lee, Shin-Young; Na, Kyoung-Won; Nam, Jeonghun; Nejadmalayeri, Amir H.; Park, Yongsang; Parmar, S.; Pyo, Junghyung; Shin, Dongjae; Shin, Jungyeop; Shin, Yong-hwack; Suh, Sung-Dong; Yoon, Honggoo; Park, Yoondong; Choi, Jung-Hwan; Ha, K. H.; Jeong, Gitae

doi:10.1364/prj.2.000a25

Cited by 27 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…There have been a series of reports on the BS photonics and its application to DRAM [12]- [24]. In Section II, we review the key results and summarize lessons learned from the DRAM integration.…”

Section: Dram Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The EIC included 2 4:1 serializers and 2 1:4 deserializers for (de)multiplexing the 8 electrical signals to 2 optical signals, 2 modulator drivers, 2 trans-impedance amplifiers(TIAs) and limiting amplifiers(LAs) for 2 PDs, and clock tree circuit. Details of the EPIC can be found in the previous reports [19], [21], [24]. In short, the PIC and EIC were physically integrated side-by-side, but not chemically because of design rule conflicts at the moment.…”

Section: B Process Flow and Chip Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was due to the increasing complexity of the electrical impedance matching over increasing I/O speeds in the multi-module configurations. Since this electrically complicated problem becomes virtually a single-frequency problem in the optical domain, the bold research-level attempt embedding PICs into DRAM was made around 2010 [12]- [24]. Note that the on-chip integration was chosen because of the tight cost expectation of the commodity DRAM.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bulk-Si Platform: Born for DRAM, Upgraded With On-Chip Lasers, and Transplanted to LiDAR

Shin

Byun

Shim

et al. 2022

J. Lightwave Technol.

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The CMOS industry has been expecting silicon photonics to provide photonic and electro-photonic integrated circuits based on the CMOS processes and infrastructures for scalability of incumbent technology evolutions and creation of novel technologies. However, the compatibility with the legacy CMOS has been compromised with the development convenience of early silicon photonics in that the specialty silicon-on-insulator substrates have been widely used as integration platforms. Since this specialty substrate may hinder the photonics integration with legacy volume products later, a legacy-friendly integration platform with a generic bulk-silicon substrate has been developed for better compatibility. This paper overviews the bulk-silicon photonics platform born for DRAM integration, upgraded with III/V-on-bulk-Si lasers, and transplanted to LiDAR applications requiring the virtuous cycle of cost and volume. The photonics integration with DRAM was to resolve the speed-capacity tradeoff in the DRAM interconnects, and technical feasibility as well as lessons learned from the integration attempt are reviewed. The bulk-silicon device performance approaches that of silicon-oninsulator devices with the thermal advantage of ~40-% lower thermal impedance and the optical disadvantage of ~0.4-dB/mm higher waveguide loss. In the LiDAR applications, detection performance up to ~20 m at 20 fps by a single-chip scanner integrating tunable laser, semiconductor optical amplifiers, and optical phased array are presented with future outlooks.

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Section: Dram Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: B Process Flow and Chip Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bulk-Si Platform: Born for DRAM, Upgraded With On-Chip Lasers, and Transplanted to LiDAR

Shin

Byun

Shim

et al. 2022

J. Lightwave Technol.

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“…Silicon photonics based on bulk-Si substrate is also an attractive option for processor-memory interfaces, especially for cost-sensitive dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) applications [ 51 ]. Processor-memory interfaces are currently facing two challenging industrial requirements.…”

Section: Silicon Photonics For High-speed Data Communicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of CMOS Integrated Circuit Technologies for High-Speed Photo-Detection

Jeong

Bae

Jeong

2017

Sensors

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The bandwidth requirement of wireline communications has increased exponentially because of the ever-increasing demand for data centers and high-performance computing systems. However, it becomes difficult to satisfy the requirement with legacy electrical links which suffer from frequency-dependent losses due to skin effects, dielectric losses, channel reflections, and crosstalk, resulting in a severe bandwidth limitation. In order to overcome this challenge, it is necessary to introduce optical communication technology, which has been mainly used for long-reach communications, such as long-haul networks and metropolitan area networks, to the medium- and short-reach communication systems. However, there still remain important issues to be resolved to facilitate the adoption of the optical technologies. The most critical challenges are the energy efficiency and the cost competitiveness as compared to the legacy copper-based electrical communications. One possible solution is silicon photonics which has long been investigated by a number of research groups. Despite inherent incompatibility of silicon with the photonic world, silicon photonics is promising and is the only solution that can leverage the mature complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. Silicon photonics can be utilized in not only wireline communications but also countless sensor applications. This paper introduces a brief review of silicon photonics first and subsequently describes the history, overview, and categorization of the CMOS IC technology for high-speed photo-detection without enumerating the complex circuital expressions and terminologies.

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“…Also, this platform is compatible to standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. However, most of electronic integrated circuits (ICs) are based on bulk-Si [12,13]. Therefore, the bulk silicon photonics platforms to overcome this substrate incompatibility are of interest [12][13][14][15][16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Device characterization of the VCSEL-on-silicon as an on chip light source

et al. 2016

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Advancement of silicon photonics technology can offer a new dimension in data communications with un-precedent bandwidth. Increasing the integration level in the silicon photonics is required to develop compact high-performance chip-level optical interconnects for future systems. Especially, monolithic integration of light source on a silicon wafer is important for future silicon photonic integrated circuits, since realizing a compact on-chip light source on a silicon wafer is a serious issue which impedes practical implementation of the silicon photonic interconnects. At present, due to the lack of a practical light source based on Group IV elements, flip chip-bonded or packaged lasers based on III-V semiconductor are usually being used as external light sources, to feed silicon modulators on SOI wafers to complete a photonic transmitter, except the reported silicon hybrid lasers monolithic-integrated on SOI wafers. To overcome above problem, we have proposed a compact on-chip light source, the directly monolithic-integrated VCSEL on a bulk silicon wafer (VCSEL-on-Si), based on the transplanted epitaxial film by substrate lift-off process and following devicefabrication on the bulk Si wafer. This can offer practical low-power-consumption light sources integrated on a silicon wafer, which can provide a complete chip-level I/O set when combined with monolithic-integrated vertical-illumination Ge-on-Si photodetectors on the same silicon wafer. In this work, we report the characterization of direct-modulation VCSELs-on-Si for λ ~850 nm with CW optical output power > ~2 mW and the threshold current < ~3 mA, over 10 Gb/s operations. We also discuss about the thermal characteristics of the VCSELs-on-Si.

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Bulk-Si photonics technology for DRAM interface [Invited]

Cited by 27 publications

References 15 publications

Bulk-Si Platform: Born for DRAM, Upgraded With On-Chip Lasers, and Transplanted to LiDAR

Bulk-Si Platform: Born for DRAM, Upgraded With On-Chip Lasers, and Transplanted to LiDAR

Review of CMOS Integrated Circuit Technologies for High-Speed Photo-Detection

Device characterization of the VCSEL-on-silicon as an on chip light source

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