A six-port 30-GB/s nonblocking router component using point-to-point simultaneous bidirectional signaling for high-bandwidth interconnects

This paper describes a high-speed six-port router component with a sustainable I/O bandwidth in excess of 30 GB/s. The device uses three distinct clock domains to connect low-speed processor and I/O nodes to a high-speed switch fabric capable of data rates of up to 6.4 Gb/s per wire on copper system interconnects. The router component is fabricated in 0.18-mum bulk CMOS technology. The 100-mm(2) device contains approximately 6.6 million transistors and consumes 21 W at a link transfer rate of 3.2 Gb/s and a supply voltage of 1.75 V. Integrated on a single component, the router core and the simultaneous bidirectional links form a building block useful in the realization of large high-bandwidth multiprocessor systems.