Georgia Tech seeks to join Pennsylvania State University (PSU) to establish the center for Optical Wireless Applications. PSU (lead institution) has already been awarded the planning grant, and has successfully completed the planning grant workshop.
This proposal seeks to make innovative contributions to the hardware technology of ExaScale computing and TeraScale informatics, and advance the state of the art in high bandwidth wireless data transmission between processor and memory dies and in wireless communication over optical fibers. The proposed work is divided into two thrusts. The first deals with the technology of TeraScale information highway which includes long distance optical communication, regional radio over fiber (RoF) and wireless end user. The second proposes a completely new approach to data exchange between a chip multiprocessor (CMP) and (DRAM) main memory within a computer node, namely a low power millimeter wave wireless data bus that bypasses the need for the traditional electrical back-plane.
The multi-disciplined nature of the project is aimed to harness a diverse educational and research approach that nurtures individual initiative in students who will actively interacts with industry and universities, to achieve a highly educated and skilled work-force that is able to compete in the global race to achieve ExaScale computing machines and a TeraScale information infrastructure. The result of this research is expected to contribute to business competitiveness, energy security, environmental protection, and climate forecast.
The next-generation information generation, processing and distribution infrastructure is envisioned here for a fully connected broadband society, where digital and analog information contents will be available to the end users at anytime, anywhere with legitimate authorization via a converged wired and wireless medium. Upcoming data-and image-intensive services in the new broadband era are enabled by an multi-service, multi-gigabits/sec wireless access network based on radio-over-fiber (RoF) technology. However, a common network access interface, with fair and intelligent treatment of information contents delivered by wireless and wired access systems is essential to provide low-latency, high-bandwidth, and high-availability services irrespective of their service types, protocols, formats or system technologies. Currently, in cloud computing, e-health applications, the scientific and medical data visualization require extremely very high bandwidth to access high volume of memory and computation power. As a result, tremendous scientific data and images are generated every minute, and more and more data storage capacity and access bandwidth are demanded in a blazing fast pace. To fulfill the ever-growing demand of the emerging healthcare and cloud computing industry, we urgently need to integrate the newest wireless and optical access system technologies, such as 60-GHz mm-Wave, 4G long-term evolution (LTE), and WiMax, overTDM-and WDM-passive optical networks, to establish high-performance, scalable access networks. Emerging applications, such as high-resolution medical images, computer-aided diagnosis, artificial-intelligence chronic disease monitoring, or automated clinical testing and analysis, require both high-speed communications and tremendous computational power. Through the RoF cloud, the union of wireless and optical access network will usher in a new communication paradigm for emerging high-speed, low-latency, ExaScale computing, diagnosis, and e-health applications. The science and technology of ExaScale computing involves the creation of advanced components and their assembly into a computer system. This enables the science, engineering, and technology that can be accomplished using supercomputers. The science and technology of the ExaScale informatics infrastructure involves the creation of the technology essential to high bandwidth communication and access networks. Both need to be advanced, and to some extent, each depends on the other. The common technical issues are bandwidth, power consumption and cost. In this planning grant proposal, we seek to make innovative contributions to the hardware technology of ExaScale computing and information distribution, and advance the state of the art in high bandwidth wireless data transmission between processor and memory units and in multi-band wireless communication over optical fiber systems and networks. This ever-present, end-to-end broadband connections between the people and Internet of things will require unprecedented bandwidth and network capacity, transparent to data formats, and agonistic to communication protocols while greatly reducing communication latency and power dissipation. Considerable ramification of benefits will result from meeting both the hardware and software challenges in ExaScale computing and high-bandwidth information distribution. These include enhancements in the performance and power efficiency of smaller computer systems and mobile and wired access connectivity, all contributing to the vitality of commerce and manufacturing industry in the United States and the world. The intellectual merit of this proposal aims to make innovative contributions to the hardware technology of ExaScale computing and the efficient communication of information in optical and wireless access networks. One research thrust aims to change the paradigm by which data is transacted between a multi-processor and main memory by digitally coding and sending and receiving radio frequency carrier waves in the millimeter band using the EM field close to the antenna thereby bypassing the copper back-plane. Preliminary estimates indicate large anticipated reduction in latency and power consumption, while achieving an unprecedented increase in the wireless data transmission bandwidth. At the heart of the technology is the leveraging microwave photonics techniques to achieve stable, low-cost, low power dissipation in an array of RF transceivers that constitute the wireless data bus. A second research thrust aims to transport coded millimeter radio wave for long distances using optical fibers in order to maintain high bandwidth connectivity over the wireless network. Viable and energy efficient optical coding strategies and network architecture and access have to be devised as do viable components for efficient RF/optical and optical/RF signal conversion and processing. In term of broader impact to the society and scientific communities, the multi-disciplined nature of the project has been carried out in the newly established I/UCRC Center for Optical Wireless Applications (COWA) in 2012 to harness diverse educational and research approaches that nurtures individual initiative in students who will actively interacts with industry and universities, to achieve a highly educated and skilled work-force that is able to compete in the global arena to achieve ExaScale computing machines between intelligent terminals and an new information infrastructure built for providing cloud computing, mobile backhauling ,and e-health applications. The result of this research is expected to contribute to business competitiveness, energy security, environmental protection, and climate forecast. y.
