On the network design and control of an optical network: interconnecting multiple chips on a wafer

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a network architecture for a multi-chip optical network-on-wafer (NoW); we concentrate on the research of its control mechanisms and control algorithms. Our proposed optical NoW aims at providing dynamically controlled terabytes-per-second unidirectional bandwidth for every chip module in a multi-chip processor. This architecture is promising in achieving low energy consumption and high aggregated bandwidth, providing a competitive idea for the next generation of optical-connected multi-chip computing systems. A synchronous network control scheme with a network control algorithm is proposed for slowly varying traffic patterns. Moreover, an edge coloring algorithm is an important part of our network control algorithm; we propose improved edge coloring algorithms modified from existing edge coloring algorithms. We show that our improved edge coloring algorithm has lower time complexity and also achieves faster execution in our experiments than the existing methods.