Architectural Exploration of Chip-Scale Photonic Interconnection Network Designs Using Physical-Layer Analysis

Abstract

Abstract-Chip-scale photonic interconnection networks have emerged as a promising technology solution that can address many of the scalability challenges facing the communication networks in next-generation high-performance multicore processors. Photonic interconnects can offer significantly higher bandwidth density, lower latencies, and better energy efficiency. Even though photonics exhibits these inherent advantages over electronics, the network designs that can successfully leverage these benefits cannot be straightforwardly extracted from typical electronic network methodologies and must consider the many unique physical-layer constraints of optical technologies. We conduct an architectural exploration of four chip-scale photonic interconnection networks in a novel simulation environment, measuring insertion loss, crosstalk, and power. We also explain and demonstrate the impact of these physical-layer metrics on the scalability, performance, and realizability of each design.

WDM-compatible mode-division multiplexing on a silicon chip

“…Here we present a platform enabling MDM in conjunction with WDM for such on-chip photonic networks. This platform could increase the bandwidth density of on-chip interconnects without increasing the number of waveguides, waveguide crossings (which can dominate the loss in complex interconnects 18,19 ) and chip area, as well as add an additional design degree of freedom in future photonic-integrated circuits and networks.…”

Silicon photonic network-on-chip and enabling components

“…As PNoC is an attractive option to break the bottleneck of electronic interconnects, its architectures and network topologies for data transmission with ultra-large bandwidth and low power consumption are developed by many different groups to meet the critical requirement in future high performance IC, such as chip multiprocessors (CMPs) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…The WDM transmission scheme is employed to enable high bandwidth. They simulated the networks using a physical-layer simulator called PhoenixSim, which is developed by them in the OMNeT++ simulation environment, to measure the insertion loss, CT, and power [15].…”

“…One is the use of wavelength-selective routing to directly guide messages from source to destination [10][11][12][13]. The other one is the space-switched system routing optical messages by utilizing active switches [14,15]. However, the existing spaceswitched systems need an additional electronic control network to set up, release, and control the optical circuits (aka light paths).…”

Broadband Silicon Photonic Electrooptic Switch for Photonic Interconnection Networks

“…Within the photonic interconnection networks, broadband electrooptic switches route high-bandwidth wavelength-parallel optical messages throughout the dynamic circuit-switched paths with ultrafast reconfiguration times [1]. Combining the functional ubiquity of the silicon photonic resonator with the advantages of higher-order configurations [2]- [5], we are able to realize broadband switching devices with massive switching bandwidths and short switching transitions.…”