Performance evaluation of the Data Vortex photonic switch

The data vortex photonic packet-switching architecture features an all-optical transparent data path, highly distributed control, low latency, and a high degree of scalability. These characteristics make it attractive as a routing fabric in future photonic packet switches. We analyze the performance of the data vortex architecture as a function of its height and angle dimensions, H and A. The investigation is based on two performance measures: the average delay and the maximum throughput of the switch. We present an analytical model assuming uniform traffic and derive closed-form expressions for these measures. Our results obtained demonstrate that as H increases, the saturation throughput decreases and approaches ²/₉ = 0.22 when A is small and H is large. Furthermore, for fixed switch size, the saturation throughput is maximized when A is minimal. We also present simulation results for the maximum throughput under uniform and nonuniform traffic, as well as for the mean number of hops and the mean input-queue packet delay as a function of input load, and address the issue of resequencing delay. The results obtained advocate that to support more ports, it is preferable to increase the height dimension and to keep the angle dimension as small as possible.