Large-scale hybrid electronic/optical switching networks for datacenters and HPC systems

We propose a novel, hybrid optical-electronic switched network architecture with flexible bandwidth provisioning for scaling the capacity of the upper tiers of next generation datacenter and high-performance computing (HPC) networks. The network combines transparent optical packet switches, based on Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) routers, and a deflection routing scheme to alleviate packet buffering requirements in the optical domain. Through simulation studies we show that, coupled with a dynamic switch-port bandwidth provisioning and load balancing scheme, the network can maintain high performance under changing traffic loading.