A 3.3-V, 500-Mb/s/ch parallel optical receiver in 1.2-μm GaAs technology

A 20-channel parallel optical receiver has been developed that achieves the data transfer rate of 1 GByte/s. Each channel takes a dc-coupled optical input and can be driven by a 250 MHz clock to have a data rate of 500 Mb/s/channel. This parallel optical receiver IC is an integral part of a low cost optical bus technology which was demonstrated to be cost competitive with copper interconnect technology. The power supply is 3.3 V to be compatible with system supply. The control inputs are CMOS logic compatible and data outputs are compatible with IEEE low-voltage differential signals. The chip has been fabricated in a 1.2 μm GaAs MESFET technology.