Opportunities for Optical Planar Interconnection Technology in Terabit Switches

• To keep up with the explosive growth of world-wide network traffic, large-capacity switches, with switching capacities in excess of several terabits per second, are becoming an essential part of the future. To realize such switches, new architecture concepts must be considered. In this paper, we discuss a technology for terabit switches that combines the advantage of using optical communication in all three spatial dimensions and the benefits of using surface mounted optoelectronic as well as electronic chips. We present three different types of packet-based switch fabrics, all based on the optical planar interconnection technology. We then discuss these in terms of capacity, scalability, and physical size. All three implementations have a single switch plane cross sectional bandwidth exceeding 5 Tbps.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datorteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Optical network architecture

Interconnection networks

Planar packaging technology

Terabit switches

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