WHAT IS AN

OPTICAL
COMPUTER
AN OPTICAL COMPUTER
IS A COMPUTER IN
WHICH ALL INTERNAL
CIRCUITS USE LIGHT
INSTEAD OF ELECTRICITY
 WHY WE NEED OPTICAL COMPUTERS

Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles
every eighteen months.
To use many transistors we have to shrink it in size. As transistors shrink, so do the
wires connecting them.
The smaller the wires, the greater the impedance and lower the current.
Resistance per unit length in the chip is being increased, causing more power
usage and excess heating.
 ADVANTAGES OF OPTICAL COMPUTERS

Optical computers have faster processing speeds, better connectivity and higher
bandwidth. They can work at 100 million times the speed of today’s machines.
Light beams can cross each other, allowing for simple travel paths between inputs
and outputs.
Problem of short circuit is eliminated.
Light does not need insulators.
Light beams are not affected by external radiation.
 LITERATURE SURVEY
1)AN INTER/INTRA-CHIP OPTICAL NETWORK FOR MANYCORE PROCESSORS
In a manycore processor system with so many cores, the communication demand
will be so large that conventional electrical interconnects may not be able to fulfill
it.
Main reasons are bandwidth density and energy consumption constraints.
Optical interconnects promise ultrahigh bandwidth, low latency, and low energy
consumption. They can address both the intra-chip and inter-chip communication
requirements with limited power budget.
2)EFFICIENT SHARING OF OPTICAL RESOURCES IN LOW-POWER
OPTICAL NETWORKS-ON-CHIP
With the ever-growing core counts in modern computing systems, networks-on-
chip (NoCs) consume an increasing part of the power budget due to bandwidth
and power density limitations of electrical interconnects.
Amon, a low-power optical NoC decreases the number of μRings, wavelengths,
and path losses to reduce power consumption
Amon improves throughput-per-watt by at least 23% (up to 70%), while
reducing power without latency overheads on both synthetic and realistic
applications
Layout and laser source placement
 3)A HYBRID OPTICAL–ELECTRONIC NOC (NETWORK-ON-CHIP)
BASED ON HYBRID TOPOLOGY
Photonics is not suitable for implementing traditional store-and-forward networks
on-chip (NoCs) due to its inability to store and process data without an optical-
electronic-optical (O-E-O) conversion.
A promising solution consists in combining electronic and photonic technologies to
build a hybrid network made up of two subnetworks.
An electronic packet-switched network for handling control and short-size
messages
A photonic circuit-switched network for large-size messages.
H2ONoC Architecture
4)OPTICAL COMPUTING
DEVICE ARCHITECTURE
BASED ON GE2SB2TE5
 Optical computing device
architecture based on the
materials consisting of
chalcogenide glassy
semiconductor thin-film structures
of GE2SB2TE5 system of
compounds is shown here.
5)OPTICAL RAM AND OPTICAL CAM ARCHITECTURES FOR DISINTEGRATED
COMPUTING AND HIGH-SPEED ROUTING APPLICATIONS

Core router devices rely on large electronic random-access memory (RAM) and
content addressable memories (CAM) banks.
Random-access memory (RAM) to provide buffering for contention resolution
functions.
Content addressable memories (CAM) are used to provide memory and
comparison functionalities for incoming packets in address look-up tables.
PhC-based SRAM cell architecture All-optical CAM cell
architecture
6)OPTICS IN COMPUTING: FROM PHOTONIC NETWORK-ON-CHIP TO CHIP-
TO-CHIP INTERCONNECTS AND DISINTEGRATED ARCHITECTURES
CURRENT CHALLENGES IN OPTICAL COMPUTING
Main energy consuming factor in optical chips are the electrical interconnects.
These consume large energy.
Memory bandwidth reduces with increasing memory hierarchy, with L1 memory
bandwidth approaching 20 GB/sec and gradually decreasing when going to L2
and L3 access until an upper limit of 12.5 GB/sec
Physical constraints
Cache coherency control messages account for more than 30% of the total
available bandwidth which reduces the remaining available bandwidth
 FUTURE OF
OPTICAL
COMPUTING
 In the near term, at least, optical
computers will most likely be hybrid
optical/electronic systems
 It is now possible to control atoms by
trapping single photons in small,
superconducting cavities. In future,
photon quantum computing could
become a possibility.
 REFERENCES
• [1] XIAOWEN WU; JIANG XU; YAOYAO YE; XUAN WANG; MAHDI NIKDAST; ZHUHAI WANG; ZHE WANG: “INTER/INTRA-CHIP
OPTICAL NETWORK FOR MANYCORE PROCESSORS”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VERY LARGE-SCALE INTEGRATION (VLSI) SYSTEMS,
YEAR: 2017, VOLUME: 23, ISSUE: 4
• [2] SEBASTIAN WERNER, JAVIER NAVARIDAS, AND MIKEL LUJÁN: “EFFICIENT SHARING OF OPTICAL RESOURCES IN LOW-POWER
OPTICAL NETWORKS-ON-CHIP”, J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. /VOL. 9,NO. 5/MAY 2017
• [3] EDOARDO FUSELLA AND ALESSANDRO CILARDO: “H2ONOC: A HYBRID OPTICAL–ELECTRONIC NOC BASED ON HYBRID
TOPOLOGY”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VERY LARGE-SCALE INTEGRATION (VLSI) SYSTEMS, VOL. 25, NO. 1, JANUARY 2017
• [4] NIKITA TOLKACH, NIKOLAI VISHNYAKOV, YURI VOROBYOV, ALEXEY AVACHEV, NATALIA RYBINA: “OPTICAL COMPUTING
DEVICE ARCHITECTURE BASED ON GE2SB2TE5”, 2017 6TH MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON EMBEDDED COMPUTING (MECO),
11-15 JUNE 2017, BAR, MONTENEGRO
• [5] THEONI ALEXOUDI, CHRISTOS VAGIONAS, PAVLOS MANIOTIS, AND AMALIA MILIOU: “OPTICAL RAM AND OPTICAL CAM
ARCHITECTURES FOR DISINTEGRATED COMPUTING AND HIGH-SPEED ROUTING APPLICATIONS”, ICTON 2018
• [6] THEONITSA ALEXOUDI, NIKOLAOS TERZENIDIS, STELIOS PITRIS, MILTIADIS MORALIS-PEGIOS, PAVLOS MANIOTIS, CHRISTOS
VAGIONAS, CHAROULA MITSOLIDOS, GEORGE MOURGIAS-ALEXANDRIS, GEORGE T. KANELLOS, AMALIA MILIOU,
KONSTANTINOS VYRSOKINOS, AND NIKOS PLEROS: “OPTICS IN COMPUTING: FROM PHOTONIC NETWORK-ON-CHIP TO CHIP-
TO-CHIP INTERCONNECTS AND DISINTEGRATED ARCHITECTURES”, JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 37, NO. 2,
JANUARY 15, 2019