Accurately modeling a photonic NoC in a detailed CMP simulation framework

Abstract

IEEEPuche Lara, J.; Lechago Buendia, S.; Petit Martí, SV.; Gómez Requena, ME.; Sahuquillo Borrás, J. (2016) This paper summarizes all of the components that conform a fully operative photonic NoC and presents their current state of the art. Moreover, we evaluate a realistic photonic network that consists of two photonic rings and a token-based arbitration mechanism and compare it against a non-realistic model. In addition, both realistic and non-realistic schemes are evaluated under different configurations varying the number of wavelengths that photonic waveguides employ. The experimental results show that the non-realistic NoC presents up to 6× network latency deviation with respect to the accurate model. This deviation is translated into a performance deviation higher than 10% in several applications studied, which demonstrates the importance of accurate models when simulating current technologies under development like nanophotonics.Finally, a power consumption model of the realistic photonic network is presented. The results show that the overall photonic network power consumption grows with the number of wavelengths per waveguide since the number of required modulators and receivers becomes higher. In this way, the proposed realistic photonic network, which employs only two wavelengths for arbitration and destination selection tasks, increases its power consumption up to 3%, so network designs with more complex arbitration mechanisms must take into account the impact of the number of wavelengths on the power consumption.

Modeling and analysis of the performance of exascale photonic networks

“…This technology provides much more bandwidth than electrical technology with much less energy consumption . Optical Networks on‐Chip (ONoCs) will become a viable option for the growing demand of high performance computing (HPC) applications that electric networks cannot efficiently deal with. On the other hand, off‐chip photonics technology can provide what is required to cover the rising requirements in Exascale computing, contributing additional advantages over electrical technology such as the volume of the interconnection links (inter‐ and intra‐cabinet) or the power savings.…”

Modeling a Photonic Network for Exascale Computing

“…This technology provides much more bandwidth than electrical technology with much less energy consumption [4], [5]. Optical Networks on-Chip (ONoCs) [6], [7] will become a viable option for the growing demand of high performance computing (HPC) applications that electric networks cannot efficiently deal with. On the other hand, off-chip photonics technology can provide what is required to cover the rising requirements in Exascale computing, contributing additional advantages over electrical technology such as the volume of the interconnection links (inter-and intra-cabinet) or the power savings.…”