Optics for Disaggregating Data Centers and Disintegrating Computing

Abstract

We present a review of photonic Network-on-Chip (pNoC) architectures and experimental demonstrations, concluding to the main obstacles that still impede the materialization of these concepts. We also propose the employment of optics in chip-to-chip (C2C) computing architectures rather than on-chip layouts towards reaping their benefits while avoiding technology limitations on the way to many-core set-ups. We identify multisocket boards as the most prominent application area and present recent advances in optically enabled multisocket boards, revealing successful 40Gb/s transceiver and routing capabilities via integrated photonics. These results indicate the potential to bring energy consumption down by more than 60% compared to current Quick-Path Interconnect (QPI) protocol, while turning multisocket architectures into a single-hop low-latency setup for even more than 4 interconnected sockets, which form currently the electronic baseline.