An efficient heuristic for permutation packet routing on meshes with low buffer requirements

Even though exact algorithms exist for permutation routine of n² messages on a n×n mesh of processors which require constant size queues, the constants are very large and the algorithms very complicated to implement. A novel, simple heuristic for the above problem is presented. It uses constant and very small size queues (size=2). For all the simulations run on randomly generated data, the number of routing steps that is required by the algorithm is almost equal to the maximum distance a packet has to travel. A pathological case is demonstrated where the routing takes more than the optimal, and it is proved that the upper bound on the number of required steps is O(n²). Furthermore, it is shown that the heuristic routes in optimal time inversion, transposition, and rotations, three special routing problems that appear very often in the design of parallel algorithms