Waffle: A New Photonic Plasmonic Router for Optical Network on Chip

Abstract

Optical interconnect is a promising candidate for network on chip. As the key element in the network on chip, the routers greatly affect the performance of the whole system. In this letter, we proposed a new router architecture, Waffle, based on compact 2×2 hybrid photonic-plasmonic switching elements. Also, an optimized architecture, Waffle-XY, was designed for the network employed XY routing algorithm. Both Waffle and Waffle-XY are strictly non-blocking architectures and can be employed in the popular mesh-like networks. Theoretical analysis illustrated that Waffle and Waffle-XY possessed a better performance compared with several representative routers.