ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a state-of-the-art overview of photonic integrated technologies for interconnects, by starting from point-to-point photonic interconnects used for intra-board communication and moving to more complex interconnection networks. It Introduces point-to-point photonic interconnects reached a high level of technological maturity in computing platform boards to overcome the limitations of electronics. Photonic interconnection networks extend the capabilities of point-to-point interconnects by enabling the transport and exchange of data between multiple ports. The chapter describes three aspects: the integrated switching devices; the interconnection network topologies; and the network control and scheduling. It presents two designed and fabricated photonic interconnection networks, one with the microring resonator as the switching element and the other with the Mach-Zehnder interferometer as the switching element. These interconnection networks prototyped within the NANO-RODIN project represent two significant case studies: their performance characterization is discussed, outlining the lesson learned toward best practices.
