Fault tolerance in optically interconnected multiprocessor networks

With the increasing demand on the interprocessor communication bandwidth, optical interconnects are being considered as alternatives to electronic interconnects in high-performance systems. In this paper, we investigate the fault-tolerance properties of optical networks in the presence of link failures. The principles of implementing a network topology using optical links differ from those of its electronic counterpart. We propose two schemes to tolerate link failures in fiber-optic networks based on wavelength-division multiplexing. The performance of these schemes is compared with the rerouting scheme, which is commonly used to tolerate link failures in multiprocessors with electronic interconnects