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doi:10.1016/j.peva.2007.05.001 
Copyright © 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Improving the performance of large interconnection networks using congestion-control mechanisms
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Received 8 March 2007;
Abstract
Interconnection networks in current parallel systems do not only increase in size; their buffer capacity and number of source ports have increased as well. All these factors result in a significant rise of network congestion compared with their predecessors. Consequently, packet injection must be restricted in order to prevent throughput degradation at high loads. This work evaluates, via simulation, three congestion control mechanisms on adaptive cut-through torus networks, using two different deadlock-avoidance methods, under various synthetic traffic patterns. Workload is generated using bursts of data exchanges (instead of a Bernoulli process) to reflect the synchronized nature of data interchanges in parallel applications. Results show that large networks perform their best when most network resources are dedicated to in-transit traffic. Besides, local congestion-control mechanisms are nearly as effective as the more costly global ones for both uniform and nonuniform traffic patterns.
Keywords: Interconnection networks; Congestion control; Synchronized workload; Adaptive routing; Virtual cut-through
Article Outline
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Router design and congestion control
- 3. Evaluation methodology
- 3.1. Workloads
- 3.2. Simulation methodology
- 4. Performance of congestion control mechanisms
- 4.1. Experiments with a bubble network
- 4.2. Experiments with a classic network
- 4.3. Comparison of alternatives
- 5. Conclusions and future work
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Vitae
