OMUX: Optical Multicast and Unicast-capable interconnection network for data centers.

Exponential growth of traffic and bandwidth demands in current data center networks requires low-latency high-throughput interconnection networks, considering power consumption. By considering growth of both multicast and unicast applications, power efficient communication becomes one of the main design challenges in today's data center networks. Addressing these demands, optical networks suggest several benefits as well as circumventing most disadvantages of electrical networks. In this paper, we propose an all-optical scalable architecture, named as OMUX, for communicating intra-data centers. This architecture utilizes passive optical devices and enables optical circuit switching without any switch configuration or path reservation. In addition, it is customized for both unicast and multicast transmissions. It can replace aggregation and core switches in the network, to reduce power consumptions. Simulation results verify its lower latency, higher throughput, and reduced power consumption, compared to conventional electrical or alternative optical solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]