Design of Giga-Bit/s optical interconnection network for computer cluster

Abstract

An optical interconnection network with parallel data transmitted through TDM optical link has been developed. The network has been applied to connect PCI bus to make up a computer cluster. A link having 20 Bits/40 Bits input and 20Bits/40Bits output in parallel and adopting a pair of fibers to transmit bi-directional data has also been implemented. An all optical network combining the TDM link and route switching by different wavelength is proposed, in which data sent to different destination computer is transmitted by optical signal at different wavelength determined by source computers. The network switch hub distinguishes wavelength and transports the lightwave to designated terminals. It is transparent to all data stream and no additional latency is inserted. This technique can be applied to establish interconnection network for the massively parallel computer and high performance computer cluster.