Optical network on chip

{{Short description|Electronic communications subsystem}}

Optical network-on-chip (ONoC) is a new type of network on chip (NoC) for multiprocessor system-on-chip. While traditional NoC relies on electrical signals to transfer information, hence called electrical network-on-chip (ENoC), its performance and energy efficiency are bound by the significantly unbalanced scaling of on-chip global metal wires comparing to transistors.[http://www.itrs.net The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151228041321/http://www.itrs.net/ |date=2015-12-28 }} Optical telecommunications have been successful in many networking domains to replace electrical telecommunications. Riding on the achievements of photonic technologies, a wide range of studies have been done on ONoC.[http://www.ece.ust.hk/~eexu/bibliography.html Optical Network-on-Chip Bibliography]