Building Many-Core Processor-To-DRAM Networks With Monolithic CMOS Silicon Photonics

by Christopher Batten, Ajay Joshi, Jason Orcutt, Anatol Khilo, Benjamin Moss, Charles W. Holzwarth, Miloš A. Popović, Hanqing Li, Henry I. Smith, Judy L. Hoyt, Franz X. Kärtner, Rajeev J. Ram, Vladimir Stojanović, and Krste Asanović

Modern embedded, server, graphics, and network processors already include tens to hundreds of cores on a single die, and this number will continue to increase over the next decade. Corresponding increases in main memory bandwidth are also required, however, if the greater core count is to result in improved application performance. Projected enhancements of existing electrical DRAM interfaces are not expected to supply sufficient bandwidth with reasonable power consumption and packaging cost. To meet this many-core memory bandwidth challenge, we are combining monolithic CMOS silicon photonics with an optimized processor-memory network architecture.