The integration of silicon photonics and VLSI electronics for computing systems

Krishnamoorthy, Ashok V.; Ho, Ron; Zheng, Xuezhe; Schwetman, Herb; Lexau, Jon; Koka, Pranay; Li, Guoliang; Shubin, Ivan; Cunningham, J. E.

doi:10.1109/ps.2009.5307781

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The electrooptic modulator is a critical device that enables high-speed conversion from an electrical signal to an optical signal, typically encoding data on a single-wavelength channel that can be combined with other optical signals through wavelength parallelism, forming a cohesive wavelengthparallel optical signal. Due to their compact size, high speed and low energy dissipation, crystalline silicon microring resonator electro-optic modulators have been the primary considerations in most recent efforts proposing chip-scale photonic interconnection networks [3,4,34,35,61]. Recent experimental validations have produced these devices with microring resonator diameters as low as 3 µm [72], modulation rates as high as 30 Gb s −1 [59], driving voltages as low as 150 mV PP [50] and in the microdisk resonator configuration, energy dissipation as low as 3 fJ bit −1 [78].…”

Section: 21mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical interconnection networks for high-performance computing systems

2012

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Enabled by silicon photonic technology, optical interconnection networks have the potential to be a key disruptive technology in computing and communication industries. The enduring pursuit of performance gains in computing, combined with stringent power constraints, has fostered the ever-growing computational parallelism associated with chip multiprocessors, memory systems, high-performance computing systems and data centers. Sustaining these parallelism growths introduces unique challenges for on- and off-chip communications, shifting the focus toward novel and fundamentally different communication approaches. Chip-scale photonic interconnection networks, enabled by high-performance silicon photonic devices, offer unprecedented bandwidth scalability with reduced power consumption. We demonstrate that the silicon photonic platforms have already produced all the high-performance photonic devices required to realize these types of networks. Through extensive empirical characterization in much of our work, we demonstrate such feasibility of waveguides, modulators, switches and photodetectors. We also demonstrate systems that simultaneously combine many functionalities to achieve more complex building blocks. We propose novel silicon photonic devices, subsystems, network topologies and architectures to enable unprecedented performance of these photonic interconnection networks. Furthermore, the advantages of photonic interconnection networks extend far beyond the chip, offering advanced communication environments for memory systems, high-performance computing systems, and data centers.

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Section: 21mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical interconnection networks for high-performance computing systems

2012

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“…Krishnamoorthy, et al [21] demonstrate some of the component technologies for larger scale integrated CMOS photonics in chip-to-chip applications. However this work is focused on the use of photonics to build photonically enabled macrochips, rather than components for use in data center networks.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A recent study [20] shows that an exascale system will likely have 100,000 computational nodes. The increasing scale and performance will put tremendous pressure on the network, which is rapidly becoming both a power and a performance bottleneck [21]. High-radix network switches [17] are attractive since increasing the radix reduces the number of switches required for a given system size and the number of hops a packet must travel from source to destination.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of optics in future high radix switch design

Binkert

Davis

Jouppi

et al. 2011

Proceedings of the 38th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

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For large-scale networks, high-radix switches reduce hop and switch count, which decreases latency and power. The ITRS projections for signal-pin count and per-pin bandwidth are nearly flat over the next decade, so increased radix in electronic switches will come at the cost of less per-port bandwidth. Silicon nanophotonic technology provides a long-term solution to this problem. We first compare the use of photonic I/O against an all-electrical, Cray YARC inspired baseline. We compare the power and performance of switches of radix 64, 100, and 144 in the 45, 32, and 22 nm technology steps. In addition with the greater off-chip bandwidth enabled by photonics, the high power of electrical components inside the switch becomes a problem beyond radix 64.We propose an optical switch architecture that exploits highspeed optical interconnects to build a flat crossbar with multiplewriter, single-reader links. Unlike YARC, which uses small buffers at various stages, the proposed design buffers only at input and output ports. This simplifies the design and enables large buffers, capable of handling ethernet-size packets. To mitigate head-of-line blocking and maximize switch throughput, we use an arbitration scheme that allows each port to make eight requests and use two grants. The bandwidth of the optical crossbar is also doubled to to provide a 2x internal speedup. Since optical interconnects have high static power, we show that it is critical to balance the use of optical and electrical components to get the best energy efficiency. Overall, the adoption of photonic I/O allows 100,000 port networks to be constructed with less than one third the power of equivalent all-electronic networks. A further 50% reduction in power can be achieved by using photonics within the switch components. Our best optical design performs similarly to YARC for small packets while consuming less than half the power, and handles 80% more load for large message traffic.

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“…Many researchers have proposed an intimately integrated platform consisting of electronics and photonics to achieve the ultimate in low power and high bandwidth density interconnect [2][3][4]. Two factors principally contribute to the overwhelming superiority of the approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon photonics platform for national security applications

Lentine

DeRose

Davids

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Aerospace Conference

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We review Sandia's silicon photonics platform for national security applications. Silicon photonics offers the potential for extensive size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-c) reductions compared to existing III-V or purely electronics circuits. Unlike most silicon photonics foundries in the US and internationally, our silicon photonics is manufactured in a trusted environment at our Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Application (MESA) facility. The Sandia fabrication facility is certified as a trusted foundry and can therefore produce devices and circuits intended for military applications. We will describe a variety of silicon photonics devices and subsystems, including both monolithic and heterogeneous integration of silicon photonics with electronics, that can enable future complex functionality in aerospace systems, principally focusing on communications technology in optical interconnects and optical networking.

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The integration of silicon photonics and VLSI electronics for computing systems

Cited by 7 publications

References 10 publications

Optical interconnection networks for high-performance computing systems

Optical interconnection networks for high-performance computing systems

The role of optics in future high radix switch design

Silicon photonics platform for national security applications

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