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The Computer Journal 1989 32(4):362-369; doi:10.1093/comjnl/32.4.362
© 1989 by British Computer Society
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Space Multiplexing of Waveguides in Optically Interconnected Multiprocessor Systems*

R. G. Melham1 §, D. M. Chiarulli1 § and S. P. Levitan2 ¶

1 Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA, 2 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Optical waveguides allow for enhanced bandwidth, loosened loading constraints and large physical distribution of computing resources. Moreover, optics enjoy a unique property that is not shared with electronics, namely the unidirectional propagation of signals. It is this property that is exploited in this paper to increase the effective bandwidth of optical buses. Specifically, a space-multiplexing technique for pipelined messages on optical buses is introduced and analysed. It is shown that pipelined buses support arbitrary routeing permutations in synchronous systems with only linear hardware complexity. Further, a bus arbitration protocol which extends the technique to asynchronous systems is presented. The pipelining of control and data signals represents a significant departure from the conventional exclusive access discipline which characterises bus-interconnected multiprocessors. By relaxing the exclusive access requirement, space multiplexing can support the design of large-scale, distributed, tightly coupled multiprocessor systems.

Received October 1988. revised December 1988.

* This work is, in part, supported under the Air Force Office of Scientific Research contract AFOSR-88-0198.

§ Department of Computer Science, the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Department of Electrical Engineering, the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA


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