A roadmap on optical interconnects in data centre networks

Optical interconnection networks have appeared as a promising technology that can be used to face the increase of the network traffic in the data centres. Data centre networks based on optical switches can provide lower latency, higher throughput and reduced power consumption. Currently, there are several approaches that have been studied but there is still no commercial implementation. This paper presents a roadmap on the data centre network traffic demand in the next years and a roadmap on the utilization of optical interconnection networks on future data centres.