ABSTRACT
It is well known that when communication distances exceed a few millimeters, optical interconnects provide speed (bandwidth) and power advantage over electronic interconnects Feldman et al. [1988]; Krishnamoorthy et al. [1992]. Therefore, in the construction of very large multiprocessor computers it is prudent to interconnect processors that are physically close using electronic interconnect, and to connect processors that are far apart using optical interconnect. We shall assume that physically close processors are in the same physical package (i.e., chip, wafer, board) and processors not physically close are in different packages. As a result, electronic interconnects are used for intra package communications while optical interconnect is used for inter package communication.
