Benchmarking on-chip optical against electrical interconnect for high-performance applications

In this paper, the opportunity of replacing on-chip electrical interconnects with optical interconnects in general purpose high performance applications is evaluated by simulations in the ITRS scaling scenario. Speed and energy consumption of a point-to-point on-chip optical interconnect link are benchmarked against on-chip electrical interconnects options optimized at circuit level for serving high performance applications. Since the on-chip optical interconnect technology is not mature yet in all its necessary link components, reasonable assumptions are taken and extrapolated in the ITRS scaling scenario.