Title :
Building 3D Torus Using Low-Profile Expansion Cards
Author :
Andujar, Francisco J. ; Villar, Juan A. ; Sanchez, Jose L. ; Alfaro, Francisco J. ; Duato, Jose
Author_Institution :
Comput. Syst. Dept., Univ. of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain
Abstract :
Torus is a subclass of direct topologies that was defined in theory to support mbi n dimensions. Although recently some supercomputers have been built on a network with five and six dimensions, the most common case is when only three dimensions are implemented. In the market, there are low-profile communication expansion cards that have a reduced number of ports which is not enough to build tori of a certain number of dimensions. In this paper, we will deal with four-port expansion cards. By means of one of these cards per node, a 2-D torus topology could be built, but not a 3-D torus topology. However, two of these cards could be used to build each node of a 3-D torus topology. In this case, two ports are used to interconnect both cards each other, and the other six ports to connect to six neighbor nodes in the 3-D torus. Theoretically, there are several ways of assigning the dimension and direction of the ports. This paper presents a detailed study of the possible port configurations, and under specific network conditions, the best of them is obtained.
Keywords :
multiprocessor interconnection networks; parallel machines; topology; 2-D torus topology; 3-D torus topology; direct topologies; four-port expansion cards; low-profile communication expansion cards; neighbor nodes; port configurations; supercomputers; Hardware; Multiprocessor interconnection; Network topology; Performance evaluation; Ports (Computers); Solid modeling; Topology; Interconnection network; formal analysis; performance evaluation; switch architecture; torus topology;
Journal_Title :
Computers, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TC.2013.155