The principal reason that commercially available 10 gigabits per second
electrical interconnect has not previously been available is that such interconnect structures possess too high a level of parasitic
inductance,
capacitance, resistance and conductance. These result in
signal degradation as a result of attenuation,
harmonic distortion and dispersion and so sufficiently error-free transmission of data has been virtually impossible for high data rates such as those around 5 gigabits per second and above. By providing compensation mechanisms,
signal integrity is improved thus enabling reliable
data transmission at data rates of 5 gigabits per second, 10 gigabits per second and above. Non-linear transmission lines are used to form these compensation mechanisms. The non-linear
transmission line may take the form of a distributed
diode, for example, formed from a layer of N-doped
silicon covered on its top surface by a layer of
platinum and on its bottom surface by a layer of
silicon dioxide. Advantageously,
voltage biased sections of NLTL are used to perform compensation for different regions of a
signal pulse according to the particular
voltage biasing used. A plurality of such
voltage biased sections of NLTL may be connected in series in order to obtain improved signal compensation.