Optical interconnects for data center networks

Abstract

Traditional data center networks built with copper wires and electronic elements suffer from various problems. These include high energy consumption due to the wired architecture, high latency due to extra hops adding to the routing delay, fixed throughput of links, and very limited configurability. Data center networks built with optical fibers and optical components would solve all of these problems but they suffer from issues of their own including higher cost, immaturity of optical components, lack of optical buffers and complexity of design. It is clear however, that optical interconnects will replace their electronic counterparts in all data center network architectures due to their superior properties.