Design Automation Beyond Its Electronic Roots: Toward a Synthesis Methodology for Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks-on-Chip

While the information and computing revolution is often credited to Moore's Law scaling, the complexity challenge has been actually addressed by electronic design automation, which is capable of transforming complex system-on-chip designs from high-level functional specifications into detailed geometric descriptions. Similarly, the uptake of emerging interconnect technologies depends not only on technology maturity, but also on the availability of tools and methodologies bridging the gap between system designers and technology developers. This chapter provides an early-phase synthesis methodology for wavelength-routed optical networks-on-chip, capturing all design points in a unified design framework, and refining them into an actual implementation.