Photonic interconnection networks have recently been proposed as a replacement to conventional electronic network-on-chip solutions in delivering the ever increasing communication requirements of future chip multiprocessors. While photonics offers superior bandwidth density, lower latencies, and improvements in energy efficiency over electronics, the photonic network designs that can leverage these benefits cannot be easily derived by simply mimicking electronic layouts. In fact, proper implementations of photonic interconnects will require the careful consideration of a variety new physical-layer metrics and design requirements that did not exist with electronics. Here, we review some of the currently proposed designs for chip-scale photonic interconnection networks, the design methodologies required to produce viable network topologies, and a simulation environment, called PhoenixSim, that we have developed to accurately model and study those metrics and designs.
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