That's true when you compare electrical vs optical links for NICs in datacenters. But this is about Silcon Photonics, which changes the equation significantly. e.g. it can be used for on-chip optical interconnects.

The silicon real estate being used for interconnect fabric PHIs is becoming significant and, unlike compute, do not scale well with node shrinks. On-die photonics means you can cut out a big chunk of your PHIs and avoid the the latency of going to NICs. The PIUMA architecture even used on-die switches to avoid having to use external switches.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-demoes-8-core-528-th...

Signal integrity is easier with no EMI nor impedance matching needed. These issues get worse as the frequency increases (which is one of the things used to increase throughput).

What about reducing interference? Optics would be better right?