Modeling, optimization and benchmarking of chip-to-chip electrical interconnects with low loss air-clad dielectrics

Analytical models are developed for pulse response of chip-to-chip interconnects modeled as lossy transmission lines. The novel compact physical models capture the losses due to skin effect and dielectric losses and predict both the pulse height and width at the receiver. The work presented in this paper demonstrates the use of these models for optimization of data-rate and interconnect geometry in order to minimize energy-per-bit and maximize bandwidth-density simultaneously. Further, the model is applied to explore and quantify the potential benefits of low-k air-clad dielectrics that reduce dielectric losses. The model predicts a maximum improvement of ideal air dielectric over a lossy GETEK dielectric to be roughly 5-6 times in both energy-per bit and bandwidth-density. Additionally, the optimizations provided in the paper set the minimum requirements for optical interconnects in order to outperform electrical interconnects.