GenStar: a generic construction method for scalable and efficient wavelength-routed optical networks-on-chip

Area of Science:

• Computer Engineering
• Optical Communications
• Integrated Circuits

Background:

• Many-core processors demand high-performance interconnects.
• Optical Networks-on-Chip (ONoCs) offer solutions but face scalability challenges.
• Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks-on-Chip (WRONoCs) provide high bandwidth and low latency but struggle with hardware overhead and insertion loss due to increasing microring resonator (MRR) and wavelength requirements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a generalized construction method for scalable WRONoCs.
• To address the limitations of existing WRONoC architectures regarding hardware overhead and performance degradation with increasing network scale.
• To introduce a unified topology construction and wavelength reuse strategy for efficient WRONoC design.

Main Methods:

• Developed GenStar, a generalized construction method for WRONoCs.
• Employed a unified topology construction approach.
• Utilized a heuristic wavelength reuse strategy to optimize resource allocation.

Main Results:

• GenStar significantly reduces the number of microring resonators (MRRs) compared to existing schemes.
• Maintained comparable wavelength counts while improving signal-to-noise ratio.
• Achieved lower insertion loss, bit error rate, and laser power consumption.
• Demonstrated improved overall performance and scalability for WRONoCs.

Conclusions:

• GenStar provides an efficient and scalable solution for WRONoC design.
• The proposed method effectively mitigates hardware overhead and performance issues in large-scale optical interconnects.
• GenStar shows significant potential for future optical interconnect design in many-core processors.