Hierarchical scalable photonic architectures for high-performance processor interconnection

Introduces two hierarchical optical structures for processor interconnection and compares their performance through analytic models and discrete-event simulation. Both architectures are based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) which enables multiple multi-access channels to be realized on a single optical fiber. The objective of the hierarchical architectures is to achieve scalability yet avoid the requirement of multiple wavelength tunable devices per node. Furthermore, both hierarchical architectures are single-hop: a packet remains in the optical form from source to destination and does not require cross dimensional intermediate routing.>