Laying out interconnects on optical printed circuit boards

Short distance optical interconnections, on-printed circuit boards, on-backplanes, and even on-chip, are a promising solution for replacing copper interconnections in future Data Center and HPC systems. Since photonic technology introduces new network building blocks, topology design for all the packaging levels should be reconsidered. This paper focuses on the on-board level of the packaging hierarchy, and proposes lay-out strategies for optical interconnection networks on optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs), based on direct topology families (tori, meshes and fully connected networks). We also describe a methodology for designing OPCBs given a set of input parameters, including building blocks specifications as well as traffic demands. The onboard topology design methodology generates all the feasible designs within the topology families examined, following our proposed OPCB lay-out approach, and selects the optimal designs based on specific optimization criteria.