Silicon Photonics for Future Computing Systems

Abstract

The primary goal of this article is to provide an overview of silicon photonics technology and its applications in the design and improvement of current and future computing systems. We start by reviewing silicon photonics technology and introducing some of its benefits and challenges as well as providing some background on it. Next, we introduce some fundamental silicon photonic components in the design of silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and optical interconnect for computing systems as well as their operating principles and applications. These components can be active, such as photodetectors and optical modulators, or passive, such as silicon‐on‐insulator (SOI) waveguides. Subsequently, we discuss the application of silicon photonics to improve the communication and computation infrastructure in future computing systems, while reviewing the state‐of‐the‐art and some design and implementation challenges. Finally, we discuss several research opportunities to push forward the application of silicon photonics in the design of future computing systems.

A Survey on Optical Phase-Change Memory: The Promise and Challenges

“…This number goes up to 1-4 pJ/bit over longer electrical links, such as in the case when a core accesses remote L3 cache banks. In addition, it takes up to 30 pJ/bit for off-chip communication when a core needs to access the CMOS main memory (i.e., DRAMs) [13], [14], [15]. While the absolute values of these energy costs may seem low, in fact, they are significantly higher than the energy budget required for future computing systems.…”