SWIFT: a testbed with optically switched data paths for computing applications

Abstract

This paper reports the implementation of SWIFT, designed to enable testing of a novel network architecture for optical interconnects, optical devices, and real world applications. We describe the design and implementation of the testbed using semisynchronous timing and multiple wavelength striping.

Motivating future interconnects

“…3 Direct comparisons are complicated by the fact that PCI-X is half duplex and PCI Express is full duplex. For these purposes, we compare aggregate throughput in PCI Express (since a read transaction is a bi-directional process) with the half-duplex throughput in parallel PCI.…”

“…SWIFT [3] and Data Vortex [4] illustrate novel approaches to LAN and HPC interconnects enabled by new photonic-electronic devices and using techniques such as the wave-length striping of data. Each of these systems was architected to embrace the bufferless nature of photonic interconnects, turning that to an advantage.…”

Dynamic control analysis for semiconductor optical amplifier dynamics in optical network applications

“…To encourage computer network and systems researchers to consider photonic devices in their solutions, it would be enormously helpful to have a "plug-and-play" solution for the SOA as an optical switch or VOA. In the SWIFT demonstrator, 3 one of the aims is to build a network demonstrator that is self-calibrating 4 and needs little human intervention. SOAs have the potential for optical switching fabrics in multistage architectures for optical packet switching using SOA-based broadcast-and-select switches, but to achieve this in a reliable and usable manner, especially for consideration of switch fabrics with many ports and multiple stages, the calibration and adjustments of the individual devices should be dealt with automatically, electronically.…”

Photonic Integrated Semiconductor Optical Amplifier Switch Circuits

“…This can still reduce network delay and remove power-consuming optical-electronic-optical conversions (Masetti et www.intechopen.com al., 2003;Chiaroni et al, 2004). The SOA gate has provided the underlying switch element for the many of these demonstrators, leading to a new class of bufferless photonic switch which assumes (Shacham et al, 2005;Lin et al, 2005;Glick et al, 2005) or implements (Hemenway et al, 2004) buffering at the edge of the photonic network. Such approaches become more acceptable in short-reach computer networking where each connection already offers considerable buffering (McAuley, 2003).…”