Silicon Photonics for High-Performance Computing: Opportunities and Challenges!

Abstract

Computing systems play an important role in today’s life. They are continuously scaling, and hence becoming more complicated, to satisfy new applications demands, such as higher computation and communication bandwidth required for big data and machine learning applications. As a result, the inter- and intra-chip communication in such systems is growing rapidly due to the continuous increase in the integration density of processing cores on a single die. Silicon photonics is introduced as a promising technology with potentials in realizing high-performance interconnect in multiprocessor computing systems. This interdisciplinary talk will discuss different opportunities as well as challenges related to employing silicon photonics in multiprocessor computing systems. Particularly, it will explore the requirements, feasibility, and performance of such systems while considering both the physical-level and the system-level perspectives.