Optics enabled networks and architectures for data center cost and power efficiency

Abstract

Bandwidth demand for data center networks continues as performance increases and is further fueled by the exploding demand for artificial intelligence and new high-performance computing workloads. Managing power and costs will require a range of solutions including new networking and workload specialized architectures, composable systems, and optical circuit switching. In this paper, we focus primarily on two topics: examining the benefits of flatter networks (enabled mainly by means of co-packaged-optics-enabled switches) and the utilization improvement potential for composable (disaggregated) systems, while discussing specialized hardware and networks, and optical circuit switching more briefly.