Solving the interconnect bottleneck. Optoelectronic FPGAs

The term smart-pixel architectures usually refers to systems that consist of optically connected electronic planes, having a regular two-dimensional structure, and in which the electronics form a high-performance array processing structure. We use the term smart-pixel interconnect to designate an optical interconnect that consists of a massive number of light sources or detectors placed on a two-dimensional grid, that interconnect to a similar array located on the surface of a neighboring chip. We do not imply any dedicated nature of the underlying electronics. Such smart-pixel interconnects are being considered as a possible way to solve or alleviate the rapidly worsening interconnect problems of VLSI.