Effect of Current Mode Signaling in Carbon Nanotube On-Chip Interconnect

Abstract

A novel signaling technique for on-chip carbon nanotube interconnect aiming a higher bitrate in the range of Terahertz (THz) with low power dissipation, employing the current mode signal transportation is proposed in this paper. The technique exploits the combined advantages of current mode signaling and carbon nanotube. Using the equivalent circuit model, the transfer function is derived for the current mode carbon nanotube interconnect. Current mode signaling through carbon nanotube interconnect is simulated in MATLAB and HSPICE to study its efficiency and performance. The results are compared with the existing voltage mode CNT, current mode copper and optical interconnect. The proposed current mode signaling for carbon nanotube interconnect achieves 102 times lesser power delay product and 90% lesser delay than voltage mode. It exhibits lesser delay, 1000 times in local and 1.2 times in global and lesser power delay product by the factor of 1000 as compared with optical interconnect.