Research project

The goal of this joint project is to prepare a study about the usefulness of optical interconnects in the board-to-board and chip-to-chip area for an onboard processing (OBP) routing network based on FPGAs and ASICs which is suitable for space craft applications. The project is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and is carried out as a joint project with European partners from Astrium France, Astrium UK and the FernUniversität Hagen. Within that project the Chair of Computer Architecture is investigating the realization possibilities for optical Clos networks based on Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM). In such WDM networks different wavelengths shall not only be utilized to increase the bandwidth but also for the realization of the routing scheme, e.g. in a future photonic network-on-chip.

In particular the Chair for Computer Architecture is working in this project on the development of appropriate routing algorithm techniques based on edge-coloring graph algorithms which can be directly mapped onto WDM networks. Hereby it has to be distinguished between static and dynamic WDM networks, i.e. networks in which the wavelength for a specific sender receiver pair is either assigned fixed or is dynamically changeable during the whole data transfer. In this context there is a trade-off to consider between the achievable routing flexibility and the necessary hardware effort which is to perform for wavelength interchanging devices in the case of using dynamic WDM techniques. A further task in this project on which the Chair of Computer Architecture is working together with the FernUniversität Hagen concerns the modeling, simulating and evaluating of planar integrated free space optics (PIFSO). Optical interconnects based on PIFSO are optimized for their use in Clos networks by means of a design framework based on evolutionary optimization techniques which was developed at the Chair for Computer Architecture. The project is carried out as a subcontractor of the FernUniversität Hagen.