Error-free optical inter-node connection for the massively parallel computer

An optical inter-node connection in a massively parallel computer testbed was used in order to determine whether large throughput highly reliable inter-node communication is attainable. Highly reliable 48-b parallel-data transmission at 100 MHz (600-MB/s throughput) was achieved. For error-free data transmission, the total skew in the inter-node data transmission was suppressed to less than /spl plusmn/1 ns. In an 80-h pseudorandom packet-data transmission test, no errors were detected. This corresponds to a BER of less than 2.17/spl times/10/sup -15/. Thus, it is clearly shown that the optical interconnection overcomes the communication bottleneck in parallel-processing systems.