Hariri Institute Hosts Joe Touch for Talk: An Optical Turing Machine for Network Processing

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM on Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Hariri Institute for Computing, Room 180

An Optical Turing Machine for Network Processing (with background on a digital optical Internet router)

Joe Touch
Director, Postel Center at University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute
Research Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Systems, University of Southern California

Abstract: The Optical Turing Machine (OTM) is an approach to digital optical processing that supports computation in the same format used for high-speed transmission. This talk identifies the key capabilities required to support native digital optical processing for typical in-network functions including forwarding, security, and filtering. Current analog and binary digital approaches, including optical transistors, are insufficient for optical networks. The requirements for developing optical communication and computation using a single encoding are presented, as are the capabilities required for network computation. Recent results in regenerating N-PSK signals using non-degenerate PSA and multilevel amplitude squeezing are presented, with an analysis of several alternate approaches and their compatibility with optical Internet routing. This talk also presents the design for such a router based on decomposing the steps required for IP packet forwarding. Implementations of hop-count decrement and header matching are coupled with a recent simulation – based approach to variable-length packet merging that avoids recirculation, resulting to variable-length packet merging that avoids recirculation, resulting in an all-optical data plane. A method for IPv4 checksum computation is presented and the implications of this design are considered, including the potential for chip and system integration.

Bio: Joe Touch is the Postel Center Director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI) and a Research Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Systems. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, when he joined ISI. His current projects involve recursive virtual networks, optical Internets, and high-performance network security. His other areas of research include Internet protocols, network architecture, and network device design. He holds 5 US patents and has published over 130 papers in conferences and journals. Joe is in Sigma Xi, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, an IEEE Senior Member and Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer, and an OSA Senior Member and Nonlinear Optics TG co-chair. He is active in the IETF in the Transport, Internet, and Security Areas, and serves on numerous conference committees. Joe’s “first principles approach to computer networking” course, based on his Recursive Network Architecture, is currently under development as a textbook.