Abstract: |
The performance of chip multiprocessor (CMP)
is determined not only by the number of the processor
cores
integrated on a die, but also
by how efficiently they collaborate with each other. With more processor cores being integrated on a die, interconnects in CMP gradually move from
traditional bus interconnects to more sophisticated networks-on-chip (NoC).
With CMP continuously requiring more communication bandwidths, metallic-based electrical NoC gradually becomes the bottleneck for improving
the performance of CMP due to its high power consumption, limited bandwidth
and long latency. Recent studies have demonstrated that photonic NoC is a
potential solution to overcome the limitations of its electrical counterpart.
Many architectures for photonic NoC have
been widely studied, such as Mesh, Fat Tree and Clos. A series of optical
devices are required to construct the optical interconnect between two
processor cores, such as lasers, modulators, multiplexers, waveguides,
de-multiplexers and detectors. Such a point-to-point interconnect is the
simplest communication mode. However, for network application environment, the
processor core is required to communicate with other processor cores. This
function is usually completed by optical router, which is located at each node of
photonic NoC and connects the local processor core with other remote nodes.
In this paper, we will review the status of optical
modulators and routers for photonic networks-on-chip and introduce our efforts
on these topics. In the first section, we will introduce the 40 Gb/s
carrier-depletion Mach-Zehnder silicon optical modulator with the extinction
ratio of 15 dB. In the second section, we will introduce the 5-port optical
router for Mesh photonic NoC and a universal method for constructing N-port non-blocking
optical router for photonic NoC.
|