In next-generation networks, ultra-high speed transfer capability will become necessary to support a variety of advanced multimedia services. The Optical Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) network is seen as one of promising networks. To deal with various multimedia services, the network should support not only unicast transmission but also multicast transmission. However, IP multicast has several problems, for example, all routers must have multicast functions. IP multicast needs routers with high overheads and excessive energy consumption. Hence, optical multicasting in optical WDM networks is a promising solution for future internet services. A tree-shared multicasting concept has been proposed to support multicast transmissions in optical WDM networks. This method assembles multiple multicast traffic streams into one burst and the burst is delivered using a shared-tree. However, this method can not be applied to dynamic multicasting. This paper proposes a novel WDM multicast design method for dynamic traffic demand using multiple shared-trees, which includes shared-tree generation/selection and wavelength assignment, for the purpose of simplifying the routing process and receiving multicast traffic efficiently. We evaluate its performance from the viewpoints of the burst loss probability and the number of redundant and useless transfers whose data is discarded at the egress edge nodes.

The single flux quantum (SFQ) is expected to be a next-generation high-speed and low-power technology in the field of logic circuits. CMOS as the dominant technology for conventional processors cannot be replaced with SFQ technology due to the difficulty of implementing feedback loops and conditional branches using SFQ circuits. This paper investigates the applicability of a reconfigurable data-path (RDP) accelerator based on SFQ circuits. The authors introduce detailed specifications of the SFQ-RDP architecture and compare its performance and power/performance ratio with those of a graphics-processing unit (GPU). The results show at most 1600 times higher efficiency in terms of Flops/W (floating-point operations per second/Watt) for some high-performance computing application programs.

In the next-generation networks, ultra high-speed data transmission will become necessary to support a variety of advanced point-to-point and multipoint multimedia services with stringent quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. Such a requirement desires the realization of optical WDM networks. Researches on multicast in optical WDM networks have become active for the purpose of efficient use of wavelength resources. Since multiple channels are more likely to share the same links in WDM multicast, effective routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) technology becomes very important. The introduction of the wavelength conversion technology leads to more efficient use of wavelength resources. This technology, however, has problems to be solved, and the number of wavelength converters will be restricted in the network. In this paper, we propose an effective WDM multicast design method on condition that wavelength converters on each switching node are restricted, which consists of three separate steps: routing, wavelength converter allocation, and wavelength assignment. In our proposal, preferentially available waveband is classified according to the scale of multicast group. Assuming that the number of wavelength converters on each switching node is limited, we evaluate its performance from a viewpoint of the call blocking probability.

We propose a desk-side supercomputer with large-scale reconfigurable data-paths (LSRDPs) using superconducting rapid single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) circuits. It has several sets of computing unit which consists of a general-purpose microprocessor, an LSRDP and a memory. An LSRDP consists of a lot of, e.g., a few thousand, floating-point units (FPUs) and operand routing networks (ORNs) which connect the FPUs. We reconfigure the LSRDP to fit a computation, i.e., a group of floating-point operations, which appears in a 'for' loop of numerical programs by setting the route in ORNs before the execution of the loop. We propose to implement the LSRDPs by RSFQ circuits. The processors and the memories can be implemented by semiconductor technology. We expect that a 10 TFLOPS supercomputer, as well as a refrigerating engine, will be housed in a desk-side rack, using a near-future RSFQ process technology, such as 0.35 µm process.