Topological Structure and Physical Layout Co-Design for Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks-on-Chip

Abstract

The wavelength-routed optical network on chip (WRONoC) is a promising solution for signal transmission in modern System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. Previous works do not simultaneously handle all the following four main issues for WRONoCs: 1) correlations between the topological structure and physical layout; 2) tradeoffs between the maximum insertion loss and the number of wavelengths; 3) runtime scalability of wavelength assignment scheme; and 4) a fully automated flow to generate predictable designs. As a result, their insertion loss estimation is inaccurate, their wavelength assignment is inefficient, and thus, only suboptimal results are obtained. To remedy these disadvantages, we present a fully automated topological structure and a physical layout co-design flow with improved wavelength assignment schemes to minimize the maximum insertion loss and the laser power simultaneously with a significant speedup. The experimental results show that our co-design flow significantly outperforms state-of-the-art works in the maximum insertion loss, laser power, and runtimes.