US 2017/0366881 A1Published application

Scalable Secure Hybrid Electrical-Optical Switched Network with Optical Wavelength Tunable Transceivers

OwnerChien-Yu Kuoinventor

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Abstract

A method for creating a hybrid electric and optical data center network is provided with a plurality of servers, a plurality of ToR/EoR switches, and an optical central switch. Each of the plurality servers maintains an electronic connection with a corresponding ToR/EoR switch from the plurality of switches. The plurality of ToR/EoR switches is interconnected to each other electronically and optically. The optical central switch in conjunction with a plurality of tunable transceivers allows a signal originating from any of the plurality of the servers, to traverse the data center network to reach any destination server. To do so, wavelength switching takes place via the plurality of transceivers at each of the ToR/EoR switches. Simultaneously, space switching takes place within the center switch. By utilizing the method, intra data center bandwidth is optimized and the network the method is utilized in is non-blocking.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A method for creating a hybrid electric and optical data center network, the method comprises the steps of:

providing a plurality of servers and an optical central switch;
providing a plurality of top-of-the-rack (ToR)/end-of-the-rack (EoR) switches, wherein each of the plurality of servers is electronically connected to a corresponding ToR/EoR switch from the plurality of ToR/EoR switches;
communicatively coupling the plurality of ToR/EoR switches amongst each other through a network of optical pathways and a network of electronic pathways, wherein the optical central switch is communicatively coupled to a subset of routable optical pathways within the network of optical pathways;
generating a wavelength-tunable signal at an arbitrary server from the plurality of servers;
transmitting the wavelength-tunable signal from the corresponding ToR/EoR switch associated to the arbitrary server to the optical central switch through the subset of routable optical pathways;
optically directing the wavelength-tunable signal with the optical central switch in order to direct the wavelength-tunable signal to a specific server from the plurality of servers;
and
transmitting the wavelength-tunable signal from the optical central switch to the corresponding ToR/EoR switch of the specific server through the subset of routable optical pathways.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.