Optical interconnection methods and systems exploiting mode multiplexing

Abstract

Optical solutions to address and overcome the issues of superseding / replacing electrical interconnection networks have generally exploited some form of optical space switching. Such optical space switching architectures required multiple switching elements, leading to increased power consumption and footprint issues. Accordingly, it would be beneficial for new optical, e.g. fiber optic or integrated optical, interconnection architectures to address the traditional hierarchal time-division multiplexed (TDM) space based routing and interconnection to provide reduced latency, increased flexibility, lower cost, and lower power consumption. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to exploit networks operating in multiple domains by overlaying mode division multiplexing to provide increased throughput in bus, point-to-point networks, and multi-cast networks, for example, discretely or in combination with wavelength division multiplexing.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This patent application also claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Applications 62 / 056,650 filed Sep. 29, 2014 entitled “Mode Multiplexing Optical Interconnection Methods and Systems”, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates to optical interconnection networks and more particularly to circuit board level, interchip, and intrachip optical interconnections and networks.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Optical fiber communications is seen as one of the most reliable telecommunication technologies to achieve consumers' needs for present and future applications. It is reliable in handling and transmitting data through hundreds of kilometers with an acceptable bit error rate and today, optical fiber communication dominates as the physical medium for medium and long distance data transmission systems and telecommunications networks. At the same time optical fibe...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Further, with almost three billion Internet users accessing these websites, including a growing amount of high bandwidth video, there is a massive amount of data being uploaded and downloaded every second on the Internet.

At the same time consumers' expectations of download / upload speeds and latency in accessing content provide additional pressure.

However, within the server the electrical interconnection networks also suffer issues when scaling to a large number of processors due to the server level interconnections albeit differing in several aspects.

Simple topologies, such as a chip-global bus, exhibit high latency, require power-hungry repeaters, and occupy large footprint.

Still, these networks just like the spline-leaf networks connecting servers require the signal to cross multiple hops for connecting distant cores and are prone to contention between concurrent message transmissions, both leading to increased latency and power consumption.

Such optical space switching architectures required multiple switching elements, leading to increased power consumption and footprint issues.

Images