Optical interconnects play an increasingly important role in computer architecture. For instance, commercial optical local-area-networks and buses allow for high-bandwidth, low power, and low- crosstalk communication among computational resources. In addition, it is now becoming clear that fixed, free-space optical interconnects will have cost and performance advantages for wire-limited graph layouts. It is not clear, however, what role reconfigurable free-space optical interconnects will play in computer architecture. To address this knowledge gap, a workshop is planned by the University of Colorado consisting of about 35 participants from leading universities, research labs and companies working in computer architecture and optical interconnects. The purpose is to compare the cost and performance of reconfigurable optical interconnects in different computer architectures against conventional electronic and fixed, free-space optical interconnect technologies. The result of the workshop will be an assessment of the current and projected capabilities of reconfigurable optical interconnects along with the communication needs of future computer architectures. This will identify the critical areas of research in reconfigurable optical interconnects. It will also place goals that must be met so that computer architectures with reconfigurable optical interconnects will have cost and performance advantages over other approaches.
