Abstract

Optical interconnection is very attractive for an inter-cabinet network in a parallel supercomputer because it enables us to reduce the amount of cables remarkably, and to extend cable length. This application requires throughput higher than 1 Gbyte/s, error-free operation for at least a year, and low latency. Error-free operation is especially important because even a single-bit error may cause system-down. Generally, an optical transceiver supports bit-error-rate (BER) as low as 10^−12,1 however, it is not sufficient to satisfy the requirement. To realize error-free operation, together with low latency, forward error- correction (FEC) is the best solution because it does not require retransmission of data to recover from errors. We have proposed a novel configuration of optical interconnection using FEC, which can correct a burst-error, and confirmed its operation through experiments, for the first time.

© 1996 Optical Society of America