Cage-shielded interposer inductances

Abstract

Disclosed microelectronic assemblies employ an integrated interposer cage to reduce electromagnetic interference with (and from) high-frequency components. One illustrative embodiment includes: at least one IC die having drive cores for a plurality of oscillators, the IC die attached in a flip-chip configuration to a (interposer) substrate, the substrate having: multiple inductors electrically coupled to said drive cores and each enclosed within a corresponding conductive cage integrated into the substrate to reduce mutual coupling between the inductors and noise coupled through substrate. Anillustrative interposer embodiment includes: upper contacts arranged to electrically connect with micro bumps on at least one IC die; metallization and dielectric layers that form multiple inductors each surrounded by bars of a conductive cage; lower contacts arranged to electrically connect with bumps on a package substrate; and a substrate with a plurality of TSVs (through-silicon vias) that electrically couple to the lower contacts. Each of the bars includes: at least one of said TSVs, at least one via through the metallization and dielectric layers, and at least one upper contact.

Description

Background technique [0001] Digital communications occur between a sending device and a receiving device over an intermediate communications medium (eg, fiber optic cable or insulated copper wire) having one or more designated communication channels (eg, carrier wavelengths or frequency bands). Each transmitting device typically transmits symbols at a fixed symbol rate, while each receiving device detects the (possibly corrupted) symbol sequence and attempts to reconstruct the transmitted data. [0002] A "symbol" is a state or active state of a channel that lasts for a fixed period of time called a "symbol interval". A symbol may be, for example, a voltage or current level, an optical power level, a phase value, or a specific frequency or wavelength. A change from one channel state to another is called a symbol transition. Each symbol can represent (ie, encode) one or more bits of binary data. Alternatively, data may be represented by symbol transitions or by sequences of ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

As the symbol rate increases, ISI can make it difficult for a receiving device to decide which symbols to send in each interval (especially when this ISI is combined with additive noise)

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