Abstract
The communication requirements imposed by the unabated growth in both
the size and computational density of modern data centers will soon outpace
the fundamental capabilities of conventional electronic interconnection networks.
Optical interconnects represent a potentially disruptive technology that can
simultaneously satisfy the throughput, latency, and energy demands of these
next-generation systems. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end photonic
networking platform for future optically-interconnected data center networks.
A reconfigurable hybrid photonic network building block and a protocol-agnostic
optical network interface comprise the key elements of our proposed system.
A modular optical switch fabric prototyping platform is designed and implemented
to support a wide variety of potential photonic technologies. We successfully
demonstrate nanosecond-scale optical packet-switching at 1-Tb/s per port (40-Gb/s × 25Λs)
through our prototype, configured as a 4 × 4 switch, and confirm error-free
transmission across all wavelengths. In order to flexibly allocate appropriate
bandwidth for heterogeneous applications, we further implement and evaluate
a novel wavelength-reconfigurable optical packet- and circuit-switch by utilizing
our optical switch platform. Finally, we detail our implementation of an optical
network interface card (O-NIC) designed to bridge the gap between the well-established
protocol layers utilized in current networks and the physical layer of the
proposed photonic networks and demonstrate its functionality by the streaming
of high-definition video through the end-to-end optical network.
© 2012 IEEE
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