Design and system implementation of a configurable optical interconnection network

Abstract

With the development of silicon photonics and wavelength division multiplexing, the advantages of on-chip optical interconnection, such as low loss, low delay and high bandwidth, can make up for the disadvantages of electrical interconnection. However, with the increase of network scale and complexity, a series of problems, such as communication congestion, low utilization rate of microring resonator and increase of insertion loss, appear in optical interconnection network. The traditional optical interconnection network structure is relatively fixed and cannot meet the needs of reconfigurable array processors. Therefore, this paper designs a configurable, non-blocking, scalable, low loss optical interconnection network structure ReLONEONoC. Depending on the array size, electrical interconnection is used within clusters, and optical communication is used for mass data transmission between clusters. Finally, the simulation and verification model of optical link is built by Waveshaper 500A/SP configurable optical device, and the coupling screening effect of microring resonator is simulated to verify the functional correctness of optical link. The prototype system of ReLONEONoC was designed by combining Waveshaper and $\mathbf{UltraScale} +\mathbf{VU}\mathbf{440}$ development platform. Statistical results show that optical communication between clusters improves both delay and loss.