
304 Communication Architectures for SoC
FIGURE 7.42
Normalized Eτ
2
as a function of the fan-out number of an optoelectronic
system with respect to the electric one. Some load capacitances are considered
[84].
decrease acquiring values lower than that of the electrical system. Even for
small values of N (N ∼ 8) the delay advantages of an optical fan-out can be
observed. These results can be extended to very-short on-chip links around
200–300 μm.
The implementation of an OI leads to a high power consumption due to
the electric-optical signal conversion. Because of that, an optoelectronic solu-
tion for a fan-out is generally worse in terms of energy than ...