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It is definitely easier to transmit spikes across a silicon chip than analog voltages or digital numbers. Analog voltages will be subject to voltage drops as th

• p1esk 10y ago
  It is definitely easier to transmit spikes across a silicon chip than analog voltages Why? We are not trying to transmit spikes, we are trying to transmit information. It's not at all clear to me that encoding a signal as a series of spikes is somehow more efficient than placing a certain voltage level on a wire. More specifically, given a particular noise floor, and a desired data rate, you either use binary encoding (spikes), but have to use higher frequency, or you use lower frequency but pack more bits into each voltage level. This would probably be affected a lot by the required frequency range. One example comes to mind: T1 transmission lines (NRZ encoding), and DSL phone lines (QAM). I don't know which one is more power efficient, and not sure if that was even a concern there, but it would be interesting to know how they compare in terms of power efficiency, and how that changes when we increase data rates or noise levels. Analog voltages will be subject to voltage drops as they traverse the chip The spikes will be subject to exactly the same voltage drops, what's your point? and require a massive number of wires because you cannot multiplex the voltages without extremely expensive (area wise) analog multiplexers I'm not sure what you mean here. What do you want to multiplex, and why spikes are better for that?