Optical broadcast systems and methods

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention are directed to optical broadcast systems (100,140,160,180). The nodes of the system can be any combination of cores, caches, input / output devices, and memory, or any other information processing, transmitting, or storing device. The optical broadcast system includes an optical broadcast bus (142,162,182). Any node of the system in optical communication with the broadcast bus can broadcast information in optical signals to all other nodes in optical communication with the broadcast bus.

Description

technical field [0001] Embodiments of the invention relate to distributing optical signals over an optical broadcast system. Background technique [0002] In recent years, trends in the microelectronics industry have indicated that future multiprocessor chips could include tens or even hundreds of nodes. Nodes may be processing elements, also known as cores, and other devices such as cache, input / output, and memory. A desirable feature is that the on-chip broadcast bus provides any-to-all communication on the chip, referred to as "any-to-all" communication. In principle, any node that can drive a bus can broadcast information over the bus to all nodes that tap off that bus. For example, broadcasting can be used to keep caches coherent for any given core. [0003] As the number of nodes increases, the bus must scale accordingly. At the same time, performance improvements in the nodes themselves require an equivalent increase in bandwidth from the bus. Greater node counts...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, even with optics, a one-to-all bus configuration consisting of several fixed transmitter broadcast buses does not scale well with respect to power and surface area because as many buses as transmitters are required

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