Switch for clustered computers: design and evaluation

Lack of understanding regarding loading/resource allocation relationships hinders scalability of clustered computing systems at the interconnect level. We seek a general understanding of conflict in cube-oriented networks so that interconnect resources can be efficiently allocated. We describe an interconnect as a multi-dimensional routing entity. This description accurately encompasses many interconnect schemes, including multistage interconnection networks (MIN), hypercubes, crossbars, and the knockout switch interconnect. The costs and benefits of multi-dimensional routing are analyzed and discussed. With uncorrelated traffic, a performance improvement of 3:1 is demonstrated when two dimensions are routed in a single stage, as opposed to one dimension per stage. When all traffic is routed to the same address, the improvement is 2.5:1. The cost for these improvements is a quantity of additional crosspoints equivalent to one additional stage