FLONA: A Low-Latency, Low-Loss Optical Network Architecture for Multicast and Broadcast

With the increasing scale of Chip multiprocessors (CMPs), high-performance multicast and broadcast among multicores have become critical for improving overall chip performance. However, traditional bus-based, ring-based and tree-based optical network architectures cannot support multicast efficiently in terms of latency, power consumption, and scalability. In this paper, we propose FLONA, a low-latency, low-loss optical network architecture for supporting multicast and broadcast effectively. In FLONA, our designed layout of the two-stage serpentine-surround waveguide in communication subnetwork could reduce the number of waveguides and microrings and optical insertion loss. In addition, according to the partition rule of the clusters, our proposed wavelength assignment and communication mechanism are able to perform efficiently multicast and broadcast with lower latency and much fewer wavelengths, which further decreases the optical insertion loss and improves the scalability. Compared with traditional optical bus-based networks and tree-based networks, the simulation results based on the SPLASH-2 and PARSEC benchmark suite show that FLONA could decrease the end-to-end average latency and the worst-case optical insertion loss, and improve the network throughput.