Title :
Energy-Efficient Design of a Scalable Optical Multiplane Interconnection Architecture
Author :
Liboiron-Ladouceur, Odile ; Cerutti, Isabella ; Raponi, Pier Giorgio ; Andriolli, Nicola ; Castoldi, Piero
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., McGill Univ., Montreal, QC, Canada
Abstract :
As the power dissipation of data centers challenges their scalability, architectures for interconnecting computers, or servers must simultaneously achieve high throughput at peak utilization and power consumption proportional to utilization levels. To achieve this goal, this paper proposes the use of an optical multiplane interconnection network, named space-wavelength (SW) switched architecture, able to route and switch packets between servers (on cards) and between processors within a card (or card ports). SW architecture exploits the space domain to address the destination card and the wavelength domain to address the destination port on a per-packet basis. Scalability and energy efficiency of the considered architecture are quantified and compared to typical single-plane architectures. Not only can the SW multiplane architecture achieve higher throughput by exploiting two switching domains, but its performance is shown to be highly scalable with network utilization. More importantly, higher performance is reached with an energy efficiency superior to single-plane architectures. The excellent energy efficiency is achieved using optical devices with low idle power.
Keywords :
computer centres; computer network performance evaluation; power aware computing; data center; destination card; destination port; energy efficiency; energy-efficient design; interconnecting computer; network utilization; optical multiplane interconnection network; peak utilization; power consumption; power dissipation; scalability; scalable optical multiplane interconnection architecture; single-plane architecture; space domain; space-wavelength switched architecture; switch packet; switching domain; utilization level; wavelength domain; Computer architecture; Energy consumption; Energy efficiency; Network servers; Optical design; Optical interconnections; Optical packet switching; Power dissipation; Scalability; Throughput; Computer network performance; optical interconnection; optical switch; power consumption; semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA);
Journal_Title :
Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of
DOI :
10.1109/JSTQE.2010.2049733