4×40 Gb/s 2 pJ/bit optical RX with 8ns power-on and CDR-lock time in 14nm CMOS

We report a low-power 4-channel NRZ optical RX including a digital burst-mode CDR measured up to 40Gb/s/lane in 14nm CMOS. The RX, designed for 850nm VCSEL based optical links, can wake-up and achieve phase-lock in 8ns at BER<2×10-12