Maximizing The Impact of Emerging Photonic Switches At The System Level

Photonic switches promise to have a large impact on future HPC and datacenter networks. However, even if we assume ideal zero-energy photonic switches, we cannot achieve significant system-wide benefits if we do not change the rest of the system architecture. This motivates co-design between emerging photonic switches and the rest of the system in order to adapt the system network to best make use of unique features of photonic switches, as well as tailor photonic switches to better support system-wide trends such as resource disaggregation. In this paper, we discuss the architectural impact of several properties of photonic switches. For each, we provide an overview of what system-level capabilities they enable, how they can be adapted to support ongoing trends, and what other synergistic advancements would produce a better system-wide improvement. In this way, we motivate further research on photonic switch metrics other than energy and bandwidth. In addition, we illustrate the potential benefit of closer collaboration between the photonic and architecture communities.

Automated summary

Photonic switches have the potential to have a significant impact on future HPC and datacenter networks, but system-wide benefits cannot be achieved without changing other parts of the system architecture. Therefore, co-design between photonic switches and the rest of the system is necessary to adapt the system network and support system-wide trends.