Multipoint Architectures for On-Board Optical Interconnects

Abstract

Optical technology offers a high-bandwidth, energy-efficient solution for the increased communication requirements of data center and high-performance computing environments and is expected to be gradually deployed at all levels of the packaging hierarchy: from board-toboard, to on-board, andeven on-chipcommunication. In this work we focus on the on-board architecture level, outlining layout strategies for multipoint networks, such as single buses as well as a mesh of buses (MB) on optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs). Driven by that, we discuss how related point-to-point topologies, such as ameshof fully connected networks (MFCN), can be realized using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and multipoint layouts. We also provide closed-form formulas for the network capacity and the average internodal distance of these two mesh-like topology families,MB and MFCN, and demonstrate how the proposed techniques and formulas can be used for designing reconfigurable mesh-like architectures on OPCBs.