Reliability Modeling and Management of Nanophotonic On-Chip Networks

While transistor performance and energy efficiency have dramatically improved in recent years, electrical interconnect improvements has failed to keep pace. Recent advances in nanophotonic fabrication have made on-chip optics an attractive alternative. However, system integration challenges remain. In particular, the parameters of on-chip nanophotonic structures are sensitive to fabrication-induced process variation and run-time spatial thermal variation across the die. This work addresses the performance and reliability challenges that arise from this sensitivity to variation. The paper first presents a model predicting the system-level effects of thermal and process variation in nanophotonic networks. It then shows how to optimize many-core system performance and reliability by using run-time techniques to compensate for the thermal and process variation effects.