Digital signal propagation on a wafer-scale smart active programmable interconnect

This paper investigates the signal integrity and performance of a novel programmable interconnect technology called DreamWafertrade. This programmable circuit board uses a wafer-scale circuit with a sea of tiny contacts to adapt to the contact type, size, spacing and alignment of external components. Supporting this ability to adapt requires a dense internal programmable interconnect network to propagate digital signals between arbitrary sets of contacts. The means to propagate the digital signals are described and characterized. Propagation delays of the chain as well as its rise and fall time characteristics are simulated. Preliminary results show that under normal conditions, the links can operate up to 630 MHz and have a mean latency of 0.3 ns/mm. Eye diagrams demonstrate improvements in the signal integrity when a signal is propagated on the DreamWafertrade interconnect compared to when it is propagated on a traditional PCB trace; the eye remains open and neat, independently of the linkpsilas length.