2×25G low power optical IC for Thunderbolt optical cable technology

This paper presents low power, 2×25.625Gb/s optical transmitter and receiver ICs for Intel Thunderbolt optical cable technology which is designed to connect electronic devices with the intension to become the standardized optical interconnect. Same circuit with four channels (4×25.625Gb/s) can be used in 100G data center optical interconnect. Each transmitter channel consumes 68mW, receiver channel consumes 78mW. Total power consumption is 146mW for each 25.625Gb/s optical link, which gives 5.69mW/Gb/s. ICs are implemented on BiCMOS process, each two channel IC occupies a die area of 0.884mm × 1.226mm. The ICs have lowest power consumption and smallest die area in industry.