The disclosed system implements a bandwidth-reconfigurable optical interconnect, which couples optical signals between N interconnect inputs and N interconnect outputs. The system includes an arrayed waveguide grating router (AWGR), which provides cyclic, single-wavelength, all-to-all routing between N AWGR inputs and N AWGR outputs. The system also includes a wavelength-insensitive switch, which provides all-wavelength, all-to-all connectivity between N wavelength-insensitive inputs and N wavelength-insensitive outputs. The system additionally includes a wavelength-selective input switch, which selectively directs up to L wavelengths from each of the N interconnect inputs into a corresponding input of the wavelength-insensitive switch, wherein unselected wavelengths from each of the N interconnect inputs pass into a corresponding AWGR input. Finally, the system includes a wavelength-selective output switch, which selectively directs up to L wavelengths from each of the N wavelength-insensitive outputs into a corresponding interconnect output, wherein each of the N AWGR outputs pass into a corresponding interconnect output.

An example system can comprise an optical circuit switch. An input port module can receive an input optical signal comprising a plurality of input components, perform an optical to electrical to optical conversion on the input optical signal, multiplex the plurality of input components to an internal optical signal, and transmit first internal optical signal on a first internal waveguide. A switch module can receive the internal optical signal and transmit the transformed internal optical signal on a second internal waveguide according to a predefined control algorithm, which can permit any input component to be mapped to any frequency group and sent to any output component. An output port module can receive the internal optical signal, perform another optical to electrical to optical conversion on the internal optical signal, and demultiplex the internal optical signal to an output optical signal comprising a plurality of output components.

The present invention provides a receiving device and an optical switching fabric apparatus, where the receiving device includes: multiple selecting modules, a fast optical switch connecting to each selecting module, an output module connecting to all the fast optical switches, and a receiver connecting to the output module, where the selecting module is configured to receive a multiwavelength optical signal, select and filter a first optical signal of a preset time segment in the multiwavelength optical signal; the fast optical switch is configured to select a second optical signal from the first optical signal filtered by the selecting module; the output module is configured to combine optical signals separately selected by all the fast optical switches into one optical burst signal; and the receiver is configured to perform optical-to-electrical conversion on the optical burst signal, and extract service data from an electrical signal.

An optical circuit switching matrix includes a plurality of optical ports, each optical port being optically coupled to a respective one of a plurality of user nodes and an optical coupler having at least one input port optically coupled to the plurality of optical ports, and an output port. The optical circuit switching matrix also includes a wavelength demultiplexer having an input optically coupled to the output port of the optical coupler, and a plurality of output ports, each output port being optically coupled to a respective one of the plurality of optical ports.

Large photonic switches can establish optical paths between a large number of inputs and outputs. A distributed control architecture may be used in order to quickly establish the optical paths in large photonic switches. The distributed control architecture may provide a hierarchical control by grouping together endpoints, determining switching requirements between the groups and determining switching requirements within the groups.

An apparatus and method for generating a photonic frame from input packet data based on a wavelength, a space and a time and for transmitting an optical signal based on a structure of the photonic frame. The apparatus includes a classifier configured to classify input packet signals based on destination information of the packet signals, and a processor configured to generate a first frame by converting each of the classified packet signals to a photonic frame based on at least one of wavelength information and port information available for each of the packet signals.

Systems and methods to incrementally scale robotic software-defined cross-connects from 100 to more than 100,000 ports are disclosed. A system is comprised of individual cross-connect units that individually scale in increments of say, 96 interconnects in tier 1 to, for example, 1,008 interconnects total. A system comprised of multiple cross-connect units arranged and interconnected in a two-tier approach is disclosed, one which achieves fully non-blocking, any-to-any connectivity with the flexibility to grow incrementally. Methods to build out this system over time, in an incremental and non-service interrupting fashion, are described.

Constellations of distributors interconnect access nodes to form a vast contiguous network. The access nodes are generally geographically spread and the constellations are generally geographically spread, however the distributors within each constellation are collocated. The access nodes are arranged into access groups. The access nodes of each access group interconnect through selected constellations, with each access node having a wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) link to each of the selected constellations, to form a three-stage network. The three-stage networks corresponding to the access groups are mutually fused so that an access node of any three-stage network has multiple paths, each traversing one distributor, to each other access node of the same three-stage network and a path to each other access node of the entire network traversing one distributor. The distributors are preferable configured as fast optical switches. The network is structured to provide global coverage without the need for conventional cross-connectors.

A network element (36) includes circuitry and at least one port (72). The at least one port is coupled to an optical fabric (32) including one or more optical switches (40) that provide optical paths between the at least one port and multiple destination nodes, at predefined time slots. The circuitry is configured to hold a schedule plan (84) that specifies which of the destination nodes are accessible via the optical fabric at which of the time slots, to queue packets that are destined to the destination nodes, and to transmit the queued packets via the at least one port in accordance with the schedule plan.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including an apparatus for generating clusters of building blocks of compute nodes using an optical network. In one aspect, a method includes receiving data specifying requested compute nodes for a computing workload. The data specifies a target arrangement of the nodes. A subset of building blocks of a superpod is selected. A logical arrangement of the subset of compute nodes that matches the target arrangement is determined. A workload cluster of compute nodes that includes the subset of the building blocks is generated. For each dimension of the workload cluster, respective routing data for two or more OCS switches for the dimension is configured. One-to-many switches are configured such that a second compute node of each segment of compute nodes is connected to a same OCS switch as a corresponding first compute node of a corresponding segment to which the second compute node is connected.