Reconfigurable intelligent optical backplane for parallel computing and communications

Abstract

A design analysis of a telecentric microchannel relay system developed for use with a smart-pixel-based photonic backplane is presented. The interconnect uses a clustered-window geometry in which optoelectronic device windows are grouped together about the axis of each microchannel. A Gaussianbeam propagation model is used to analyze the trade-off between window size, window density, transistor count per smart pixel, and lenslet f-number for three cases of window clustering. The results of this analysis show that, with this approach, a window density of 4000 windows@cm 2 is obtained for a window size of 30 µm and a device plane separation of 25 mm. In addition, an optical power model is developed to determine the nominal power requirements of a 32 3 32 smart-pixel array as a function of window size. The power requirements are obtained assuming a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor inverter-amplifier and dual-rail multiple-quantum-well self-electro-optic-effect devices as the receiver stage of the smart pixel. r

Embeddings of Star Graphs into Optical Meshes without Bends

“…Our motivation comes from the recent development of mesh-like optical networks with multiple channels in each dimension [4,6,10,14,15]. However, this paper is essentially a theoretical result applicable to any technology that favors rectangular embeddings without bends.…”

“…The optical channels in each row or column can be realized by multiplexing multiple wavelengths onto a single fiber [4,10,14]. Alternatively, the optical channels in each row or column can be realized by exploiting hundreds or thousands of microscopic optical beams emanating from a single optoelectronic device such as a smart pixel array [15,16]. Finally, the optical channels can be realized by exploiting the temporal advantages of optics, i.e., the ability to clock optics at much higher rates then electronics, creating the means to support multiple electronic channels in the optical medium [6,15].…”

“…Proof. The proof follows from Lemma 3 and the formula for expansion (15) where the number of cliques c is n or n + 1 when n is even or odd, respectively.…”

Architecture of a Terabit Free-Space Intelligent Optical Backplane

“…By exploiting the spatial parallelism of optics, the backplane can support more bitparallel optical channels than electrical channels (also see [2,25,31]). By exploiting the temporal advantage of optics, the optical channels can be clocked at much faster rates than the electrical channels (also see [13,31]). By exploiting the wavelength parallelism of optics, the backplane optical channels can use distinct wavelengths.…”

“…The smart pixel arrays can simultaneously transport and process terabits of data per second and make decisions on which data to extract according to arbitrary extraction criteria. This unique capability can be used to implement communication primitives used in shared memory multiprocessors directly in the optical backplane [31], including point-to-point and multi-point switching, broadcasting, error and flow control, packet acknowledgment, media access control protocols such as token ring, slotted ring, and pipelined bus access schemes, packet buffering, parallel prefix, resource arbitration, snoopy-cache coherence protocols, and synchronization, to name a few.…”