Analysis and Design of Manycore Processor-to-DRAM Opto-Electrical Networks with Integrated Silicon Photonics

Abstract

In this report we summarize the results of the investigation to improve the performance of manycore processors with silicon photonic networks for core-to-core and DRAM communication. Our findings indicate that in on-chip core-to-core networks, photonic Clos networks improve the energy-efficiency by 2-3x over other types of electrical networks while providing uniform bandwidth and latency over a range of different applications, at the fraction of the costs and with orders of magnitude smaller demands on photonic device count, power and footprint than global photonic crossbar networks. We also propose a way to utilize the photonic interconnects to efficiently connect multi-socketed chips into a flat, shared memory network, enabling a higher degree of die disintegration for improvements in yield, packaging, thermal and power delivery.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 24, 2009
Accession Number
ADA511353

Entities

People

  • Krste Asanovic
  • Vladimir Stojanović

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Coding
  • Computer Science
  • Content Addressable Memory
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Electrical Networks
  • Energy Consumption
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Hypervelocity Flow
  • Manufacturing
  • Materials Science
  • Mesh Networks
  • Network Topology
  • Networks
  • Photonic Devices
  • Silicon Photonics
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional

Readers

  • Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.

Technology Areas

  • Quantum Science - Quantum Key Distribution