"Ox "- Optical crossbar switch designs for parallel processing

As an alternative to electronic networks, large-scale (1000x1000) optical crossbar switching networks for use in parallel processing supercomputers may employ freespace optical transmission and known communications protocols in either a beam spreading/masking model or in a beam steering model, with either single-or double-sided nodal arrangements. The particular form of optical crossbar network chosen determines to some extent the class of admissable communications protocols, which in turn affects such performance parameters as connection establishment latency and network throughput.