2011 Special Symposia

Meeting the Computercom Challenge: Components and Architectures for Computational Systems and Data Centers
Packet Switching Symposium

Meeting the Computercom Challenge: Components and Architectures for Computational Systems and Data Centers

Organizers: Keren Bergman1, Chuck Joyner2, Akihiko Kasukawa3, Petar Pepeljugoski4, Clint Schow4, Michael Tan5, Ioannis Tomkos6; 1Columbia Univ., USA, 2Infinera, USA, 3Yokohama R&D Labs Furukawa Electric Co., Japan,4IBM T. J. Watson Res. Ctr., USA, 5Hewlett Packard Labs, USA, 6Athens Information Technology Ctr., Greece

The Meeting the Computercom Challenge Symposium is soliciting contributions! See the Submissions section for information on preparing your submission. The submission site will open for contributions in August 2010.

At OFC 2011, a special symposium will again be held to address an increasingly large and important part of the global fiber optics market: interconnects for computer systems and data center networks. The first Computercom symposium at OFC 2010 marked a continuing expansion of OFC programming into the fast growing area of optical communications in computer networks. Performance gains in computer systems are increasingly achieved through interconnecting large numbers of parallel processor nodes. Within the next decade, Exaflop machines will be produced that incorporate tens of millions of optical links. Traditional optical transceiver modules are too costly, bulky, and power hungry to support this scale of deployment. A new class of optimized short-reach, low-power, and low-cost optical interconnects must therefore be developed to enable next-generation large-scale systems and future, highly-interconnected data centers. Computer and data center networks will continue to be a focus area for the 2011 conference with a complete schedule including showfloor activities, technical sessions, and market perspectives. The Computercom Special Symposium will again be a primary showcase for the topic with a dynamic lineup of invited speakers from computer and data center systems companies, content and cloud-computing providers, and leading research groups. Through the invited and contributed talks, the symposium will provide an extensive background and unique perspective, from the top-down through systems requirements and from the bottom-up through novel hardware under development, on the challenging and fast-growing field of high-performance short-reach optical networks.

The symposium focuses on the components and architectures that will enable the deployment of massive optical networks underpinning next-generation Exa-scale computers and highly interconnected data centers. The topics are concentrated on lowering the cost and power of short-reach optical interconnects (<100m) while simultaneously increasing the aggregate bandwidth.

Topics include but are not limited to:

  • Power-efficient optical engines (transmitters and receivers)
  • Low-power parallel optical transceivers
  • Novel packaging for low-cost integrated optics and parallel transceivers
  • Optics/micro-optics for low-loss parallel optical coupling
  • Integrated waveguides: chip, module, and board
  • Waveguide-to-fiber coupling
  • Hybrid Integration, dense co-packaging of optics and drive electronics
  • WDM/CWDM interconnects for integrated optics and parallel modules
  • Si Photonic devices and on-chip networks for module and chip-scale integration
  • Si photonic packaging focused on many channels at low cost
  • Low-power drive electronics for current and novel optical devices
  • Novel devices and approaches for integrated optics
  • VCSELS/multimode links
  • MEMs structures for low-cost efficient packaging
  • Module and board package design: closely integrating optics with logic
  • Current and future requirements for computer and data center interconnects
  • Network architectures for improved interconnect bandwidth efficiency
  • Network management for optimized power efficiency

Invited Speakers:

Optical Interconnects for High-Performance Embedded Computing, Nadya Bliss; MIT Lincoln Lab, USA

Fiber and Copper Cabling in Data Centers, Doug Coleman; Corning, USA

Copper and Optical Ethernet, John D'Ambrosia; Force10  Networks, USA

Optics Requirements for Datacenters and Servers, Ron Ho; Oracle/Sun Microsystems Labs, USA

Optics for Supercomputers, Steven Scott; Cray, USA

Tsubame HP/NEC PetaFlop Supercomputer, Hatazaki Takao; Hewlett-Packard, Japan

Datacenter Networking, Amin Vahdat; Univ. of California at San Diego, USA

Role of Silicon Photonics in Future Computer Networks, Yurii Vlasov; IBM T. J. Watson Res. Ctr., USA

Systems Aspects of Optical Technologies in Datacom/Computercom and Relevant EU Activities, Ian White; Cambridge Univ., UK

Packet Switching Symposium

Mounir Hamdi1, Andreas Kirstädter2, Dominic Schupke3; 1Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology, Hong Kong,2Univ. of Stuttgart, Germany, 3Nokia Siemens Networks, Germany

The Packet Switching Symposium serves as a forum to explore and highlight significant opportunities and challenges facing the future of packet switching in all its applications (e.g., routing and network design, data centers, optical networking, etc.). Key leaders from academia and industry will give invited presentations and exchange ideas that may stimulate and guide industry and academic research efforts over the next 5-10 years. In addition to the invited presentations, there will be a panel discussion comprised of experts representing a broad range of viewpoints and technology.

The presentations will span a wide range of topics:

  • Packet optical transport networks
  • Innovative switch and router architectures
  • High-performance packet scheduling hardware and algorithms
  • Optical switching and routing
  • Data center designs and management
  • Power-aware switching and routing
  • Security-aware routers, switches, data centers, and storage systems
  • High-performance storage area networks
  • Quality of services support in switches/routers
  • Network monitoring, management, and operations

Invited Speakers:

Title to Be Announced, Achim Autenrieth; ADVA Optical Networking, Germany

Title to Be Announced, Thomas M. Bohnert; SAP Res. CEC Zurich, SAP AG, Switzerland

Title to Be Announced, Vincent Chan; MIT, USA

Title to Be Announced, Jonathan Chao; NYU-Poly, USA

Title to Be Announced, Gert Eilenberger; Alcatel-Lucent Deutschland AG, Germany

Title to Be Announced, Ori Gerstel; Cisco, Israel

Title to Be Announced, Pathmal Gunawardana; Nokia Siemens Networks, USA

Title to Be Announced, Kireeti Kompella; Juniper Networks, USA

Title to Be Announced, Biswanath Mukherjee; Univ. of California at Davis, USA

Title to Be Announced, Rod Tucker; Inst. for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES) and Ctr. for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN), Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Univ. of Melbourne, Australia