Optical Packet Switching meets Mythbusters

Rod Tucker
University of Melbourne

Optical Packet Switching Myths

Packet Switching Myths

Electronic packet switches are power-hungry Optical technologies are not power-hungry Electronic packet switches have reached their limit of scaling Optical packet switches can scale to massive throughput The electronic bottleneck constrains electronic throughput Optical to electronic (O/E) and electronic to optical (E/O) converters need to be eliminated

Electronic Packet Switch

k:1 DEMUX Forwarding Engine 1: k MUX

Fibers

k J

mxm Switch DEMUXs m O/E Converters MUXs Switch Fabrics Electronics Buffers Optics

Reduced bit rate (i.e. parallel processing) Speed (throughput) is not a limitation

Optical Packet Switch

Forwarding Engine

mxm WavelengthInterchanging Switch Demutiplexers Input Synchronizers Output Buffers Mutiplexers

Electronics

Optics

Optical synchronization and buffering not viable in practice. See, for example, Tucker JLT, pp. 4655-4673, 2008.

Electronic Packet Switch (Wavelength I/O)

No buffers
Forwarding Engine 1:k DEMUX (45pJ/b)
1

Forwarding Engine

k:1 MUX

(20 pJ/b/stage)

E/O
2

1 2 1 2 m m

1 2 k k 1 2 m m

mxm Electronic Switch

(B/k)
Input wavelengths
O/E (30 pJ/b)

(B)

(30 pJ/b/stage)

kxk Electronic Switches

Output wavelengths

(B/k)

(B)

Electronic Packet Switch (Wavelength I/O)

Wavelength

Bit rate per wavelength = B Waveband

123 k 123 k 123 k

Wavelength (WL)

Optical Frequency

Waveband (WB)

Aggregate bit rate per waveband = B

Bit rate per wavelength = B/k

Optical Frequency

Electronic Packet Switch (Waveband I/O)

No buffers
1:k DEMUX O/E 1 1 2 k k 1 m k
1 2

Forwarding Engine

Forwarding Engine E/O

(45pJ/b)

k:1 MUX
1 2 k

mxm Electronic Switch

m k

(B/k)
kxk Electronic Switches

Input wavebands

(B)

(30 pJ/b)

Output wavebands

(B/k)

(B)

Integration: see, for example, R. Nagarajan et al., JSTQE 2010

Electronic Switch Fabric

Three-stage Benes
switches switches switches

1
switch switch switch

Power consumption = 21 W Ebit = 20 pJ Assuming Benes architecture, p = 2 log 2 144 1 = 14 Ebit = 1.4 pJ / stage

Input-to-Output Energy per Bit

10-7

Energy per Bit per Switch, Ebit (J)

10-8

Excludes Forwarding Engine

Limited by O/E/O and MUX/DEMUX speed

10-9

Wavelength

10-10 Waveband 2010 10-12 10 100 1000 Switch Capacity: mB = 1000 Tb/s

10-11

Bit Rate per Wavelength or Waveband, B (Gb/s)

Optical Packet Switch

Driver

mxm Optical Switch (B)

E/O
1 1 2 1 2 1 2

Input wavelengths (B)

Output wavelengths (B)

m O/E 1:k DEMUX m m

m k:1 MUX

Forwarding engine, header replacement (B/k) Power off during payload ?

Optical Packet Switch

Consider four switch fabric technologies: Arrayed-waveguide-gratings with tuneable wavelength converters Semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) gate arrays Arrays of 1 X N electro-optic switches Micro-ring resonator switches

AWG-Based Switch Fabric

Three-stage Benes
m TWCs
1
AWG AWG AWG

m TWCs

m TWCs

m FWCs
1

m
AWGs AWGs AWGs

m x m Benes SOA Gate Array

4mlog2 m -1 control lines

1 2 3 FWC SOA Gate 3-dB Coupler

1 2

Number of stages = 2 log 2 m 1

m = 1024 19 stages m = 8192 25 stages

R. F. Kalman et al., , IEEE Photonics Tech. Lett., vol. 4, p. 1048, 1992.

Crosstalk in SOA Gate Array

Idrive ~ 100 mA
Pcrosstalk
1 ER 3 dB 2 ER 3 dB

2 log 2 m 1
ER 3 dB

3 dB

Psignal

Extinction Ratio

Crosstalk 2 log 2 m 1 = Signal ER

Array of 1 X N E/O Switches (Spanke Architecture)

n (> m) control lines
1 2 1 2

n control lines

1xm switch

mx1
switch

n control lines
1 2 1 2

FWC

1xm switch

mx1
switch

m = 1000 ~ 2 x106 control lines m = 10, 000 ~ 2 x108 control lines

T. Tanemura and Y. Nakano, IEICE Electron. Express, 2008.

Dilated Micro-Ring Resonator Switch

FWCs 1 2 control lines Crosspoints FWCs 1 2

CMOS driver

4 resonance controllers

Lee et al., IEEE Photonics Society Annual meeting, 2010

Energy per Bit per Switch

Excludes Forwarding Engine 10-7

Energy per Bit per Switch, Ebit (J)

O-Spanke

10-8

O-Benes/Spanke O-SOA

10-9
E-WL

10-10
E-WB O-AWG O-Micro-Ring

10-11 2010 10-12 10

Switch Capacity: mB = 1000 Tb/s 100 1000

Bit Rate per Wavelength or Waveband, B (Gb/s)

Energy per Bit per Switch (2020)

Electronics: ITRS Roadmap. 10-7 Optics: 10% p.a. improvement.
O-Spanke

Energy per Bit per Switch, Ebit (J)

O-Benes/Spanke

10-8
O-SOA

10-9
O-Micro-Ring E-WL O- AWG

10-10

10-11 2020 10-12 10 100 1000

E-WB

Switch Capacity: mB = 1000 Tb/s

Bit Rate per Wavelength or Waveband, B (Gb/s)

Switch Power Consumption(2020)

107

B = 100 Gb/s Switch Power Consumption (W)

2020 106
O-SOA O-Benes/Spanke

105
O-AWG

104

E-WL

E-WB

103 100

1000

Switch Throughput, mB (Tb/s)

Packet Switching Myths

Electronic packet switches are power-hungry Optical technologies are not power-hungry Electronic packet switches have reached their limit of scaling
- Optical interconnects

Optical packet switches can scale to massive throughput The electronic bottleneck constrains electronic throughput Optical to electronic (O/E) and electronic to optical (E/O) converters need to be eliminated Conclusion: Dont underestimate the potential of electronics

Cascaded m x m Packet Switches

Energy per Bit per Switch
1

1 mxm
switch

2 mx m
switch

p
1 mxm
switch

Bit rate per wavelength = B

P 1
Ebit

P 2

Pp
i= p i =1

Pi

mBp