Photonic technologies can provide many benefits to High Performance Computing systems. Meter-scale communications in current supercomputers rely on optical cables already, yet substantial progress can be achieved to better integrate optical transceivers within the compute nodes. Deeper integration of photonics, however, may trigger important changes in node architectures. In particular, the organization of memory hierarchies might undergo significant review if very large amounts of memory, not necessarily co-packaged with the main compute die, can be accessed in a high-bandwidth and energy efficient way. In conjunction with improved integration of photonic at end-points, transparent photonic switching can also be leveraged to increase interconnect flexibility at low cost, or to offload regular electronic packet routers. Photonic switching is undoubtedly subject to very distinct rules and constraints when compared to its electrical counterpart, and its insertion in very large scale architectures must be carefully engineered to be advantageous. In this talk, we review the prospects of integrated Photonics and optical switching. Main figure of merits for future on-chip optical transceivers and switches will be introduced. In light of these results, potential upcoming changes and challenges in interconnect and node architectures will be sketched and discussed.

Speaker(s): Sébastien Rumley,

Location:
Room: M-2204
Bldg: Polytechnique Montréal, Pavillon Lassonde
Montreal, Quebec