Nowadays, billions of digital data are exchanged in the world. Hence, Digital data transfer is a key technical issue within High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. They have to be very fast (faster and faster) and low power (lower and lower). Communication through Optic Fibers, well known for long distance communications, is also well suited for short distance (from centimeter to meter). In this case, the targeted system contains massively parallel optical links based on optical fiber bundle, an array of micro-Leds to send light data to optical fibers, an array of photodetectors to receive light data from the optical links and an embedded processing system (Data modulation, parallelization) to share the input digital data into this massive parallel system.

This study will be based on under development advanced technologies from CEA-Leti (3D stacking Circuits, new micro-Led and photo-diode devices). The PhD student will study the integrated electronic architecture of a such system within this technological environment, which implies compactness, massively parallelism and very promising in terms of performance gain related to the state of the art. High level modelling, pre design, studies on signal integrity and complex modulation will show us the capabilities of such a future optical communication link.

Based in Grenoble, the PhD will be supported in his research work by two teams of experts in integrated circuit design and photonics.

Research environment : http://www.leti-cea.com/cea-tech/leti/english/Pages/Applied-Research/Facilities/Integration-Platform.aspx