Performance comparison between optoelectronic and VLSI multistage interconnection networks

Abstract

The performance characteristics of optoelectronic and VLSI multistage interconnection networks are compared. The bases of the comparison include speed, bandwidth, power consumption, and footprint area. The communication network used in the comparison is a synchronous packet-switched multistage interconnection network built from 2*2 bit-serial switching elements. CMOS technology was used in the VLSI implementation, and it is assumed that the entire network resides on a single chip. Regular free-space optical interconnects are used in the optoelectronic implementation. The results show that for large networks optoelectronics offers higher speed and lower area than VLSI. Based on the assumed technology parameters, optoelectronics outperforms VLSI in bandwidth for network sizes above 256.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>