SWIFT: A High Capacity Wavelength-striped Optically Switched Network with Electornic Control

High capacity optical networks are well established in the long-haul networks arena, with new developments, such as all optical switching, being pursued to further benefit these networks. Research at Intel has shown that high capacity optical links can offer advantages for short range networks such as device interconnects and computer clusters. However, there are many challenges in taking the technologies used in the long-haul networks and applying them to short range networks.

Here we present a semisynchronous, multi-wavelength striped optical network architecture with an electronic control system, suitable for short range networks from SANs and small LANs down to chip interconnects. We outline the challenges involved, and examine how our short range architecture overcomes them. We also present SWIFT, the Semisynchronous Wavelength Striped Interconnect Flexible Testbed, a novel optical testbed designed to enable evaluation of our network design with a combination of physical medium evaluations, low-level synthetic traffic and real world applications.