Abstract-Multilevel pulse amplitude modulation (M -PAM) is gaining momentum for high-capacity and power-efficient cloud computing. Compared to the classic on-off keying (OOK) modulation, high-order PAM yields better spectral efficiency but is also more susceptible to physical layer degradation effects. We develop a cross-layer analysis framework to examine PAM transmission performance in data center network environments supporting both optical multicasting and wavelength routing. Our analysis is conducted on a switch architecture based on an arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) core and distributed broadcast domains, exhibiting different physical paths, and random, uncontrolled crosstalk noise. Reed-Solomon coding with rate adaptation is incorporated into PAM transceivers to compensate for impairments. Our Monte Carlo simulations point to the significant impact of AWG crosstalk on higher-order PAM in wavelength-reuse architectures and the importance of code rate adaptation for signals traversing multiple routing stages. According to our study, 8-PAM offers the highest effective bit rates for signals terminating in one broadcast domain and performs poorly when considering interdomain connectivity. On the other hand, the impairment-induced degradation of interdomain capacity for 4-PAM can be limited to 20.4%, making it better suited for connections spanning two broadcast domains and a crosstalkrich stage. Our results call for software-defined PAM transceiver designs in support of both modulation order and code rate adaptation.Index Terms-Arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), bit error rate (BER), data center, forward error correction (FEC), goodput, optical multicast, physical layer, pulse amplitude modulation (PAM).

We explore a novel, free-space optics based approach for building data center interconnects. It uses a digital micromirror device (DMD) and mirror assembly combination as a transmitter and a photodetector on top of the rack as a receiver (Figure 1). Our approach enables all pairs of racks to establish direct links, and we can reconfigure such links (i.e., connect different rack pairs) within 12 µs. To carry traffic from a source to a destination rack, transmitters and receivers in our interconnect can be dynamically linked in millions of ways. We develop topology construction and routing methods to exploit this flexibility, including a flow scheduling algorithm that is a constant factor approximation to the offline optimal solution. Experiments with a small prototype point to the feasibility of our approach. Simulations using realistic data center workloads show that, compared to the conventional folded-Clos interconnect, our approach can improve mean flow completion time by 30-95% and reduce cost by 25-40%.

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