Guest Editors' Introduction: Hot Interconnects

......We are pleased to introduce this special issue of IEEE Micro, featuring articles representing the leading-edge activities in high-performance interconnection networks presented at the 2008 IEEE Symposium on High-Performance Interconnects at Stanford University. The Hot Interconnects symposium is an international forum for academic and industry researchers to describe the latest cutting-edge research or unveil new improvements in product development in areas related to high-performance interconnection networks. The importance and influence of highperformance interconnection networks continues to grow. In the recent past, research into high-performance networking technologies impacted wide-area internetworking, data centers, and supercomputers. The move of chip multiprocessing systems to the mainstream has increased the need for advancements in on-chip interconnects, fueling the development of technologies in areas such as photonics and requiring new approaches in which power and density are critical constraints. High-performance networking is becoming a fundamental technology in more arenas, including financial services and cloud computing. In turn, this expanded scope creates new challenges requiring innovations in algorithms, software, and hardware for highperformance interconnection networks. This special issue features six articles that touch on various topics in high-performance interconnects, including silicon photonics, crossbar-scheduling algorithms, memorycoherency hardware design and implementation, and optical networks. These articles span the spectrum from fundamental algorithmic advances to the deployment of new commercially available products.