Low-power photonic interconnects for data centres

预计到2012年，互联网上视频共享的增长将占所有流量的50%（思科系统公司）。随着处理器速度的提高，高速路由器和存储网络等高性能数据中心预计将支持带宽的增加。然而，处理器的全部计算潜力在数据中心变得越来越难以实现。互连的处理器和共享存储器之间的电数据总线是带宽有限的，并且随着数据速率的增加而表现出高损耗。因此，片外数据通信的功耗是显著的。事实上，今天的数据通信占全球二氧化碳排放量的0.5%（2007年Gartner Group估计）。在未来，这种功耗将限制数据中心的性能可扩展性。为了解决这一限制，研究人员提出了一项针对数据中心的低功耗光子互连领域的研究计划。

The growth of video sharing over the Internet is forecast to represent 50 percent of all traffic by 2012 (Cisco Systems Inc.). High performance data centres such as high-speed routers and storage networks are expected to support this increase in bandwidth as the speed of processors increases. However, the full computational potential of processors is becoming difficult to achieve in data centres. Electrical data buses between interconnected processors and shared memory are bandwidth limited and exhibit high losses as the data rate increases. Consequently, the power dissipation of off-chip data communication is significant. In fact, today's data communication is responsible for 0.5% of carbon dioxide emissions globally (2007 Gartner Group estimation). In the future, this power dissipation will be limiting the performance scalability of data centres. To address this limitation, the investigator is proposing a research program in the area of low-power photonic interconnects for data centres.