Li Y, Wang T, Linke R A
Appl Opt. 1996 Mar 10;35(8):1282-95. doi: 10.1364/AO.35.001282.
A large crossbar switch, which is a desirable building block for any low-latency interconnect network, is difficult to implement because of many practical problems associated with digital electronics. We propose a new method for implementing a large optoelectronic crossbar interconnect to take advantage of a unique principle of optics. Based on an emerging vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) technology, a passive angle-multiplexed beam-steering architecture is proposed as a key component of the optoelectronic crossbar. Various optical system parameters are evaluated. Because there is no optical fan-out power loss, the interconnect capacity of the proposed system is determined by the diffraction-limited receiver power cutoff, and therefore interconnection of more than 1000 nodes with a per node bandwidth of 1 GHz is possible with today's technology. A 64-element VCSEL-array-based proof-of-principle optical system for studying the interconnect scalability has been built. Details of the features of the proposed system, its advantages and limitations, demonstration experimental results, and their analyses are presented.
大型交叉开关是任何低延迟互连网络所期望的构建模块，但由于与数字电子学相关的许多实际问题，它很难实现。我们提出了一种实现大型光电交叉互连的新方法，以利用光学的独特原理。基于新兴的垂直腔面发射激光器（VCSEL）技术，提出了一种无源角度复用光束转向架构作为光电交叉开关的关键组件。评估了各种光学系统参数。由于不存在光扇出功率损耗，所提出系统的互连容量由衍射极限接收器功率截止决定，因此利用当今技术可以实现超过1000个节点的互连，每个节点带宽为1 GHz。已经构建了一个基于64元VCSEL阵列的原理验证光学系统，用于研究互连可扩展性。介绍了所提出系统的特性细节、其优点和局限性、演示实验结果及其分析。
