Modeling Free-Space Optical k-ary n-Cube Wormhole Networks

This paper presents an optical interconnect model for k-ary n-cube network topologies based on free-space analysis. This model integrates relevant parameters inherent to optics with traditional network parameters to make it applicable for performance evaluation of parallel processor optical network designs. We apply this model to a free-space diffractive-reflective optical interconnect design and compare our results with electronic-based networks. keywords: free-space optical interconnects, k-ary n-cube networks, optical interconnect model, performance evaluation, wormhole switching. ✝ The research described in this paper was supported in part by an NFS Research Initiation Award, grant ECS-9411587, an NFS Career Award, grant ECS-9624251, and by a research fellowship from the Thai Government.