Method and apparatus for energy efficient implementation of scalable optical interconnection architectures

A multiplane network architecture is proposed for packet switching. It exploits the time, space, and wavelength domain for switching and for enhancing the communication bandwidth. It is realized with optical devices, and exhibits a good scalability and an energy efficiency in the order of picoJoules per bit.  This is achieved thanks to the utilization of space switches based on self-enabled semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) and a different approach in achieving wavelength-stripped optical packets.

• Lower power consumption (i.e., higher energy efficiency) compared to full-electronic networks
• High scalability
• High throughput

Application and market size

ICT market, more specifically in the interconnection network required in routers and large computing platforms (such as data centers and high-performance computing systems - HPC), where thousands of computers are interconnected