A tool for synthesizing power-efficient and custom-tailored wavelength-routed optical rings

Out of all the optical network-on-chip topologies, the ring has been proved to be far superior to its competitors: the contention-free all-to-all communications offer the lowest latency possible, while its clean physical design with few crossings and ring resonators provides unmatchable power results. The ring implements simultaneous communications by using a communication matrix that sets a distinctive waveguide-wavelength pair for each of them. That communication matrix has a high impact on energy consumption, but so far there have been very few efforts towards optimizing and automating its design. As far as we know, we propose the best optical ring design algorithm, which produces rings with the lowest number of wavelengths and waveguides in the literature. The algorithm is completed with a layout-aware and fully automated laser power calculation framework to help the user choose the most power-efficient design point.