NeTS: Small: Tunable Opto-Electric Network Architectures & Benchmarks

NSF Award Search · 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $540,000 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Long-term sustainable, energy-efficient, and high-performance cloud computing network infrastructures are crucial to advancing national prosperity and promoting the progress of science. To meet this challenge, this project develops a new family of networks that employs optical circuit switching technologies. The fundamental issues this project seeks to address include the design of the new network structures that are highly resilient and flexible to application requirements, the design of the algorithms and software that optimize the use of the new networks, and the design of the methodology and software that accurately measure the performance of the new networks. This project not only provides exciting hands-on education opportunities for students, but it also benefits the scientific community by improving the efficiency of scientific computational tasks. Optical circuit switching technologies have negligible power consumption with data-rate agnostic properties, thus have the potential to overcome the inherent challenges of conventional network architectures consisting of power-hungry electrical packet switches that must be upgraded frequently. Furthermore, optical circuit switching enables tuning of the network topology by dynamically reconfiguring the circuits at runtime, leading to high performance. However, approaches for achieving tunability in optical network architectures are nascent and the community lacks standard performance benchmarks. This project develops a n

Key facts

NSF award ID
2528646
Awardee
William Marsh Rice University (TX)
SAM.gov UEI
K51LECU1G8N3
PI
Tze Sing E Ng
Primary program
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
SMALL PROJECT
Estimated total
$540,000
Funds obligated
$540,000
Transaction type
Standard Grant
Period
10/01/2025 → 09/30/2028