A Study of the Optimal Data Rate for Minimum Power of I/Os

Abstract

Power dissipation of multi-gigabit per second parallel input-output (I/O) links is an integral part of total integrated circuits (IC) power dissipation. This brief presents an optimal data rate per I/O link at which the power dissipation is minimized. The data rate is expressed as a function of the transmission channel's frequency response. The impact of considering the power due to on-chip electronic switching depends on the process technology of the IC. The analysis results show that an upper bound for the data rate exists based on the channel's frequency response and that the upper bound is being approached with more advanced process technologies