Petascale Cyberinfrastructure by Nanoscale Systems Integration

Professor S.J. Ben Yoo
Director, CITRIS
University of California, Davis

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 3:00pm
Engr IV Room 57-124

Abstract
The remarkable growth in data traffic and information processing is changing the landscape of today’s cyberinfrastructure. However, today’s network operation centers (NOCs) and data centers already consume ~10 Megawatts of power for ~10 Terabit/sec or TeraFLOPS. Scaling to Petascale systems is possible only by taking a fundamentally new approach. This talk will discuss nano-systems-integration and the new cyberinfrastructure for Healthcare-IT and Environment/Energy being investigated at CITRIS. We will discuss three nanosystems in the context of the new cyberinfrastrcutre. The first example discusses a new computing system using nanophotonic interconnects, nanowire electronics, and spintronics to realize a fundamentally new system where processing, interconnection, and memory are ‘balanced’ as advocated by Amdahl’s law. The new architecture also brings concurrency supported by wavelength-parallelism and offers a flattened architecture to facilitate parallel programming. The second example discusses a new networking infrastructure based on optical-label switching (OLS) systems where pipelined all-optical contention resolution avoids traditional store-and-forward IP routers to achieve ultra-low latency (~11 ns) and rapidly switching (~500 ps) OLS routers scalable to 42 Petabit/sec aggregate capacity. Testbed demonstrations included 1,001 hop cascaded OLS router operation, 477 km field fiber network trials, and video multicast/unicast and FTP applications. The current chip-scale integration of OLS routers using micron-scale technologies is bringing the power consumption and footprint by x2000, and nanoscale technologies expect power reduction by additional two orders of magnitude. The third example discusses integration of sensing, processing, and networking nanoscale-components on a chip to realize extremely low power and high-performance components on a portable unit. We will discuss how these systems will help transform future cyberinfrastructure, and how they will impact future Healthcare and Environmental monitoring.

Biography
S. J. Ben Yoo serves as Director of UC Davis CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) and Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of California at Davis (UC Davis). His research at UC Davis includes future Internet architectures, high-performance optical switching systems, nano photonic-electronic systems integration for next generation networking and computing systems. His recent demonstrations included optical label switching routers scalable to 42 Petabit/sec aggregate capacity with 1000 times improvement in performance/power efficiency over conventional electronic routers. Prior to joining UC Davis in 1999, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Bellcore, leading technical efforts in optical networking research and systems integration for DARPA sponsored MONET and NGI projects. His research activities at Bellcore included optical-label switching for the next-generation Internet (NGI), reconfigurable optical networks, wavelength interchanging cross connects, wavelength converters, vertical-cavity lasers, and high-speed modulators. He also participated in the advanced technology demonstration network/multiwavelength optical networking (ATD/MONET) systems integration, and a number of standardization activities. Prior to joining Bellcore in 1991, he conducted research on nonlinear optical processes in quantum wells, a four-wave-mixing study of relaxation mechanisms in dye molecules, and ultrafast diffusion-driven photodetectors at Stanford University (BS’84, MS’86, PhD’91, Stanford University). Prof. Yoo serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Photonic Technology Letters, and Guest Editor for IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, IEEE Journal of Special Topics in Quantum Electronics, and OSA Journal of Optical Networks. Prof. Yoo is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of OSA, and a recipient of the DARPA Award for Sustained Excellence in 1997, the Bellcore CEO Award in 1998, and the Mid-Career Research Faculty Award (UC Davis) in 2004.