HERO: Pbit High-Radix Optical Switch Based on Integrated Silicon Photonics for Data Center

To establish flatten networks and accomplish rapid and efficient communications in the future hyper-scale data centers, HERO, a high-radix optical switch based on integrated silicon photonics, is proposed in this work. The architecture of HERO, including the switch fabric, switch interface, and switch controller, is described in detail. Two new switch control approaches: 1) split-transaction predictive control and 2) wavelength-group switching, are developed. The efficient control together with the optimized high-radix integrated optical switch fabrics help HERO achieve over 1 Pbps switching capacity. Even for small packets, such as 64–256 B Ethernet packets, the maximal utilization of the switch can reach up to 83%, and the throughput can approximate 1 Pbps. Further design explorations on the packet length and some key configurations, including the number of wavelengths and wavelength groups, are also conducted in this work, paving the way to the design of high-performance flatten data-center networks in the future.