Realistic end-to-end simulation of the optoelectronic links and comparison with the electrical interconnections for system-on-chip applications

Abstract

A detailed comparison of optoelectronic versus electrical interconnections for system-on-chip applications is performed in terms of signal latency and power consumption. Realistic end-to-end models of both interconnection schemes are employed in order to evaluate critical performance parameters. A variety of electrical and optoelectronic interconnection configurations are implemented and simulated using accurate optical device and electronic circuit models integrated under an integrated circuit (IC) design computer-aided design tool. Two commercial complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies (0.8 /spl mu/m and 0.25 /spl mu/m) are used for the estimation of the signal latency and the power consumption as a function of the interconnection length for the different link configurations. It was found that optoelectronic interconnects outperform their electrical counterparts, under certain conditions, especially for relatively long lines and multichannel data links.