A multilayer nanophotonic interconnection network for on-chip many-core communications

Multi-core chips or chip multiprocessors (CMPs) are becoming the de facto architecture for scaling up performance and taking advantage of the increasing transistor count on the chip within reasonable power consumption levels. The projected increase in the number of cores in future CMPs is putting stringent demands on the design of the on-chip network (or network-on-chip, NOC). Nanophotonic interconnects have recently emerged as a viable alternate technology solution for the design of NOC because of their higher communication bandwidth, much reduced power consumption and wiring simplification. Several photonic NOC approaches have recently been proposed. A common feature of almost all of these approaches is the integration of the entire optical network onto a single silicon waveguide layer. However, keeping the entire network on a single layer has a serious implication for power losses and design complexity due to the large amount of waveguide crossings. In this paper, we propose MPNOC: a multilayer photonic networks-on-chip. MPNOC combines the recent advances in silicon photonics and three-dimensional (3D) stacking technology with architectural innovations in an integrated architecture that provides ample bandwidth, low latency, and energy efficient on-chip communications for future CMPs. Simulation results show MPNOC can achieve 81.92 TFLOP/s peak bandwidth and an energy savings up to 23% compared to other proposed planar photonic NOC architectures.