| Issue |
Ann. Phys. Fr.
Volume 24, Number 3, 1999
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Page(s) | 197 - 215 | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/anphys:199903011 | |
| Published online | 15 May 1999 | |
Optical switchcubes for communications in parallel processors
1
Institut d'Optique, CNRS, B.P. 147, 91403 Orsay Cedex, France.
2
Institute of Computer Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
3
Supelec, Technopole Metz 2000, 57058 Metz Cedex, France.
We propose the concept of an “optical switchcube” to help handling the communication load in a parallel computer composed of tens or hundreds of processor clusters operating under the loosely synchronous model of parallel computing. A switchcube can establish a communication and send one packet of data from any node to any combination of the other nodes; several nodes can send data in parallel as long as some mechanism is used to avoid conflicts at the receiver end. A small scale experimental illustration has been implemented using commercially available acousto-optic technology; a bit error rate lower than 10-12 was measured.
© EDP Sciences, 1999