The role of optical links in HPC system interconnects

As high-performance scientific computing continues to advance to higher degrees of parallel computing power, the system interconnect becomes a more critical performance-related resource. Optical links have been used strategically to reduce cost per performance in HPC system interconnects for the past decade. In this paper, we explore the performance implications of optical link performance on scientific applications in leading network designs, placing optical signaling technology in the context of its usefulness to HPC system interconnects.