Proximity communication is a

Sun microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

technology of wireless

chip Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...

-to-chip communications. Partly by Robert Drost and

Ivan Sutherland Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subj ...

. Research done as part of

High Productivity Computing Systems High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) is a DARPA project for developing a new generation of economically viable high productivity computing systems for national security and industry in the 2002–10 timeframe. The HPC Challenge (High-perf ...

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

project. Proximity communication replaces wires by capacitive coupling, promises significant increase in communications speed between chips in an electronic system, among other benefits. Partially funded by a $50 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Comparing traditional area ball bonding, proximity communication has one order smaller scale, so it can be two order denser (in terms of connection number/PIN) than ball bonding. This technique requires very good alignment between chips and very small gaps between transmitting (Tx) and receiving (Rx) parts (2-3 micrometers), which can be destroyed by thermal expansion, vibration, dust, etc. Chip transmitter consists (according to presentation slide) of big 32x32 array of very small Tx micropads, 4x4 array of bigger Rx micropads (four times bigger than tx micropad), and two linear arrays of 14 X vernier and 14 Y vernier. Proximity communication can be used with 3D packing on chips in

Multi-Chip Module A multi-chip module (MCM) is generically an electronic assembly (such as a package with a number of conductor terminals or "pins") where multiple integrated circuits (ICs or "chips"), semiconductor dies and/or other discrete components are int ...

, allowing to connect several MCM without sockets and wires. Speed was up to 1.35 Gbit/s/channel in tests of 16 channel systems. BER < 10⁻¹². Static power is 3.6 mW/channel, dynamic power is 3.9 pJ/bit.

External links

Slides by Robert J. Drost

List of Drost patents in Sun, most of which is about Proximity communication
Semiconductors Semiconductor technology Microtechnology Sun Microsystems {{wireless-stub