High Efficiency Photonic Switch for Data Centers

The worldwide demand for instant access to information is driving internet growth rates above 50% annually. This rapid growth is straining the resources and architectures of existing data centers, metro networks and high performance computer centers. If the current business as usual model continues, data centers alone will require 400TWhr of electricity by 2020. In order to meet the challenges of a faster and more cost effective data centers, metro networks and supercomputing facilities, TIPD propose to demonstrate a new type of Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) optical switch that will support transmissions speeds up to 1Tb/s, and requires significantly less energy per bit than electronic switching. The optical switch employs a new piston MEMS device which enables a novel holographic switching implementation with low insertion loss. The technological innovation we are proposing is to use a diffraction pattern (or hologram) to develop an optical switch based on the piston MEMS micromirror device that can reduce the cost per bit transmitted by a factor of 50 compared to electronic switching. The primary output of the Phase 1 project will be a 1×10,000 port prototype optical switching engine can be reconfigured 100 times faster than existing technology. In this proposal, TIPD will replace the energy intensive, and data-rate limiting electronic switch with a semiconductor based optical switch capable of supporting transmission rates of 1Tb/s and beyond. The proposed CMOS optical switch will perform 100 times faster than the currently available commercial technologies and offers revolutionary improvements in energy usage, reliability and scalability. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The high speed optical switch can be used improve the performance of the current ROADMs and cross connect switches in data centers, metro networks and high performance computing facilities. The prototype 1×10,000 switch will be evaluated in the CIAN NSF testbed to determine key network performance metrics. Implementing the new holographic switch into data centers could reduce overall energy usage by 4TWhrs.