1. A compute cluster comprising: a photonic interconnection having one or more optical transmission paths for transmitting independent frequency channels within an optical signal to each node in a set of nodes; one or more photonic-interconnection-based writers, each writer associated with a particular node, and each writer encoding information generated by the node into one of the independent frequency channels; a switch fabric that directs the information encoded in the independent frequency channels to one or more nodes in the compute cluster; and one or more photonic-interconnection-based readers, each reader associated with a particular node, and each reader extracting the information encoded in the independent frequency channels directed to the node for processing.