Passive optical interconnection network employing a shuffle-exchange topology

The design of the optical interconnection network (OIN) system is presented. The network is implemented by the use of only passive optical elements and is based on a shuffle-exchange interconnection pattern. Each passive optical shuffle-exchange stage is designed for cascadability. The OIN switch nodes are capable of broadcast and combine operations in addition to bypass and exchange. The OIN is designed to be controlled by an electronic address computer in a circuit-switched manner. Although the OIN is designed to be used as a subsystem on the shared-memory optical/electronic computer, it may be used as a complete subsystem in other communication or computing architectures.