64-Gb/s highly reliable network switch (RHiNET-2/SW) using parallel optical interconnection

RHiNET-2/SW is a network switch that enables high-performance optical network-based parallel computing system in a distributed environment. The switch used in such a computing system must provide high-speed, low-latency packet switching with high reliability. Our switch allows high-speed 8-Gb/s/port optical data transmission over a distance of up to 100 m, and the aggregate throughput is 64 Gb/s. In RHiNET-2/SW, eight pairs of 800 -Mb/s × 12-channel optical interconnection modules and a one-chip CMOS ASIC switch LSI (a 784-pin BGA package) are mounted on a single compact board. To enable high-performance parallel computing, this switch must provide high-speed, highly reliable node-to-node data transmission. To evaluate the reliability of the switch, we measured the bit error rate (BER) and skew between the data channels. The BER of the signal transmission through one I/O port was better than 10^-11 at a data rate of 800 Mb/s × 10 b with a large timing-budget margin (870 ps) and skew of less than 140 ps. This shows that RHiNET-2/SW can provide high-throughput, highly reliable optical data transmission between the nodes of a network-based parallel computing system.