disadvantages of different technologies are presented. These comparisons focus on
energy dissipation and the potential for integration and miniaturization.
Finally, to bring the various threads of the chapter toge ther, the projected power
consumption is estimated for high-cap acity packet switches using a variety of
optical and electronic technologies. Two key conclusions of this chapter are
(a) there is no solution in sigh t to the optical buffer problem, and (b) optoelectronic
switch fabrics usin g optoelectronic wavelength converters and arrayed-waveguide
grating multiplexers (AWGs) appear to potentially offer the lowest-power solu-
tions. Therefore, electronic buffers, and optoelectronic wavelength converters and
regenerators are likely to remain ...