Energy-Efficiency Comparison of Multi-Layer Deposited Nanophotonic Crossbar Interconnects

Abstract

Single-layer optical crossbar interconnections based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing stand among other nanophotonic interconnects because of their low latency and low power. However, such architectures suffer from a poor scalability due to losses induced by long propagation distances on waveguides and waveguide crossings. Multi-layer deposited silicon technology allows the stacking of optical layers that are connected by means of Optical Vertical Couplers. This allows significant reduction in the optical losses, which contributes to improve the interconnect scalability but also leads to new challenges related to network designs and layouts. In this article, we investigate the design of optical crossbars using multi-layer silicon deposited technology. We propose implementations for Ring-, Matrix-, λ-router-, and Snake-based topologies. Layouts avoiding waveguide crossings are compared to those minimizing the waveguide length according to worst-case and average losses. The laser output power is estimated from the losses, which allows us to evaluate the energy efficiency improvement induced by multi-layer technology over traditional planar implementations (33% on average). Finally, networks comparison has been carried out and the results show that the ring topology leads to a 43% reduction in the laser output power.

References

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Index Terms

• Networks

  • Network architectures

  • Network performance evaluation

  • Network types

    • Network on chip