The AMOEBA switch: An optoelectronic switch for multiprocessor networking using Dense-WDM

We present a single-chip asynchronous multiprocessor optoelectronic bit-sli ced arrayed (AMOEBA) crossbar switch, The AMOEBA switch addresses the chall enge to produce a large-scale, nonblocking packet switch through dense inte gration of photonic devices directly onto silicon VLSI circuits, Optoelectr onic-VLSI technology is used to integrate the switch fabric, routing contro ller, packet buffers, line interface circuits, and optoelectronic conversio n devices on a single chip. We show how free-space optical interconnects an d wavelength-and-space-division-multiplexe networking on single-mode fibers can provide switched interconnection between multiple nodes in a distribut ed computing environment. An optomechanical transceiver package accomplishe s the free-space-to-fiber interfacing, We report the implementation and tes ting of the key components of a 16-channel AMOEBA prototype switch with a p otential capacity of 12.8 Gb/s (or 800 Mb/s/channel), and capable of switch ing 16 million packets per second.