Fiber Optic Backplane Interconnect for Supercomputers

70100S02-II While the computational power of scalable parallel computing systems has reached trillions of operations per second, the bandwidth and latency of interconnection system presents a bottleneck to further advances in computing performance. Optical interconnects offer many advantages over electrical ones, including higher spatial and temporal bandwidth, higher data rates, lower crosstalk, lower power requirements, higher interconnect densities, lower clock skews, reduced transmission-line-related effects, and thus increased signal integrity at high frequencies. This project will develop a fiber optic backplane interconnect for high-productivity supercomputing that will make possible a scalable terabit all-optical ring computer network. Phase I developed optical hardware (multifiber optical connector, optical coupler, and wavelength division multiplexing transceiver) that was used to prove the feasibility of the interconnect. A working model multi-wavelength interconnect exhibited a high data transfer rate with a low bit error rate. In Phase II, an efficient optical interconnection topology and architecture will be developed, along with the optical and electro-optical devices required to implement the optical interconnection architecture. Routing algorithms and media access protocols also will be developed. The performance and scalability of the optical architecture and its applicability to high-speed supercomputing applications will be assessed. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by awardee: The proposed interconnect in an all-optical network should have application to such demanding tasks as weather forecasting, munition assessment and simulation, and materials research. Government labs, universities, and supercomputer developers represent potential customers for the technology.