New protocol for multistage interconnection networks

Multistage interconnection networks (MINs) are a cost-effective way of providing interprocessor communication in multiprocessor systems. Many MIN protocols have been studied in the literature but all are known to suffer from the ´hot-spot´ effect which causes network throughput to drop when a particular output pin becomes more heavily utilised (hotter) than the other pins. The paper outlines a protocol which is designed to be less susceptible to such effects. The new protocol is a variant of the circuit switching class and simulation results indicate that it gives better overall performance than other protocols in the same class.