Scalable routing schemes for massively parallel processing using reconfigurable optical interconnect

We consider the message routing/broadcasting problem in an optically interconnected massively parallel processing system, where each node in the system sends/broadcasts randomly generated packets to others. The network model considered is the reconfigurable optical interconnect (ROI). It is based on the new device capabilities enabled by recent advances in optical technology. A ROI node can use light beams to transmit messages to any other nodes in the network, provided that no others transmit to the same destination concurrently. We present communication schemes that can achieve near optimal throughput with significantly lower delay. The difference in performance for routing is on the order of /spl Omega/(n/sup 2/3/ log log n/log n) when the number of nodes n in the network is large.