Reprint: Routing in Optical Interconnection Networks Using NNs

[Lee Giles]

The following reprint is available via the NEC Research
Institute ftp archive external.nj.nec.com. Instructions for
retrieval from the archive follow the summary.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


          "Routing in Optical Multistage Interconnection Networks:
                      A Neural Network Solution"

                           C. Lee Giles 
     NEC Research Institute, Inc. and UMIACS, University of Maryland
                               and
                         Mark W. Goudreau 
                     NEC Research Institute, Inc.



                               ABSTRACT


There has been much interest in using optics to implement computer 
interconnection networks. However, there has been little discussion of routing 
methodologies besides those already used in electronics. In this paper, a neural 
network routing methodology is proposed that can generate control bits for an 
optical multistage interconnection network (OMIN). Though we present no optical 
implementation of this methodology, we illustrate its control for an optical 
interconnection network. These OMINs can be used as communication media for shared 
memory, distributed computing systems. The routing methodology makes use of an 
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) that functions as a parallel computer for generating 
the routes. The neural network routing scheme can be applied to electrical as well 
as optical interconnection networks. However, since the ANN can be implemented using 
optics, this routing approach is especially appealing for an optical computing 
environment. The parallel nature of the ANN computation might make this routing 
scheme faster than conventional routing approaches, especially for OMINs that 
are irregular. Furthermore, the neural network routing scheme is fault-tolerant. 
Results are shown for generating routes in a 16 by 16, 3 stage OMIN.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          FTP INSTRUCTIONS

                unix> ftp external.nj.nec.com (138.15.10.100)
                Name: anonymous
                Password: (your_userid at your_site)
                ftp> cd pub/giles/papers
                ftp> binary
                ftp> get optics_long.ps.Z
                ftp> quit
                unix> uncompress optics_long.ps.Z

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--                                 
C. Lee Giles / NEC Research Institute / 4 Independence Way
Princeton, NJ 08540 / 609-951-2642 / Fax 2482
==