Fan-in and Fan-out with Optical Interconnections

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Optical beams are known to have many desirable properties when used for providing interconnections. Such interconnections would be used in an all-optical computer based on optical gates, but can be used at various levels of architecture in electronic computing systems. The fan-out of optical interconnections from one computing element to N computing elements is accompanied by an N-fold loss of light power for each connection. Less obvious is the fact that fan-in of connections from N- computing elements to a single computing element can in some cases also be accompanied by an N -fold loss of power.