Fully programmable and scalable optical switching fabric for petabyte data center

Opt Express. 2015 Feb 9;23(3):3563-80. doi: 10.1364/OE.23.003563.

Abstract

We present a converged EPS and OCS switching fabric for data center networks (DCNs) based on a distributed optical switching architecture leveraging both WDM & SDM technologies. The architecture is topology adaptive, well suited to dynamic and diverse *-cast traffic patterns. Compared to a typical folded-Clos network, the new architecture is more readily scalable to future multi-Petabyte data centers with 1000 + racks while providing a higher link bandwidth, reducing transceiver count by 50%, and improving cabling efficiency by more than 90%.