Re:U.S. Focuses on Invigorating Chiplets' to Stay Cuting- Ed...
by wmf on Friday May 12, 2023 @10:12PM
(#35924785)
At the distances (millimeters) involved, optical is slower, more expensive, and consumes more power than electrical signaling.
Re:U.S. Focuses on Invigorating Chiplets' to Stay Cuting- Ed...
by adapteva on Saturday May 13, 2023 @06:40AM
(#35927150)
As long as the processing is being being done with electrons (CMOS), there will be a pretty big hit for converting back and forth to photons. In package chiplet communication is actually not that inefficient as long as you can put them right next to each other (like on a chip). Intel demonstrated this with AIB. With parallel interfaces, you can get to 0.1-0.5pJ/bit transferred, which is good enough for most.
I saw a demo from Kodak once where they printed a fiber optic backed motherboard and it was lightning fast even when they increased distance. No clue what the heck happened to that tech but I do recall one of the folks giving a lengthy explanation about how fiber optics could replace some of the metal used in cpus because they could make microscopic glass