Performance evaluation of mesh-connected wormhole-routed networks for interprocessor communication in multicomputers

The authors describe a set of experiments conducted on wormhole-routed Symult 2010 systems to measure the performance of their interprocessor communication networks. They then analyze the results to predict the performance of similar systems. They first show that long path lengths in this mesh have a negligible effect on communication time. Next, they show that the contention for network channels can scale up with the system size, and that the effect is observable in current machines. It is also shown that resources within a node itself can become a bottleneck. Given current architectural trends, it is concluded that contention for network resources, and not path length, will become the primary concern in ensuring fast communication in future multicomputers