OP: Application-Aware Reconfigurable Silicon-Photonic Interconnected Computing Systems for Energy-Efficient and Scalable Data Centers

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project addresses energy efficiency and scalability of datacenters and computing systems, which form the core of our cyber-infrastructures. As our everyday lives are critically dependent on these large-scale computing systems, and the amount of data that need to be processed is increasing exponentially, the project impact is two-fold: (a) scalability improvement far beyond what possible today due to the limited power efficiency of current systems relying on electrical interconnects and switching, and (b) significant reduction of the overall power consumption of these large-scale systems with benefits for the energy and environment sectors around the world. In addition, by adopting innovative silicon photonic interconnect technologies, the project promotes a new technology sector that can drive transformative changes in the way we access and process data. Integration of research and education will be carried out throughout this project, which offers a rich platform for cross-disciplinary interaction of optoelectronics, networking, and computer science. The proposed project will allow students and researchers to gain comprehensive insight into future data center networking technologies from diverse perspectives. The proposed project will pursue scalable, high-throughput and energy-efficient computing systems by incorporating high-radix silicon photonic switches in Multi-Socket Blades (MSBs) which are optically interconnected through an application-aware reconfigurable network. Specifically, the project will pursue the following key research tasks: (1) design/fabrication/testing of athermal silicon photonic switches for high-radix, all-to-all interconnects; (2) design/fabrication/testing of optical multi-socket boards with Electro-Optic Printed Circuit Boards (EO-PCBs); (3) development of a simulation framework to evaluate energy efficiency, performance and scalability of the proposed application-aware optically-reconfigurable data center architecture under realistic traffic; (4) system-wide benchmarking studies for topology reconfiguration and resource allocation; (5) proof-of-concept physical layer demonstration of intra and inter MSB communication through the fabricated silicon photonic switches and EO-PCBs.