CAREER: Novel Wormhole Switch Architectures for High Performance with Fairness

Drexel University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

Switch architectures for parallel systems have traditionally been designed for performance, eliminating only the worst kinds of unfairness such as starvation scenarios. With the increasing use of parallel systems in multi-user environments, however, stricter fairness is essential for reliable benchmarking, performance guarantees and protection from other users. This research investigates novel approaches to achieving fairness in high-performance wormhole switch architectures popular in interconnection networks of parallel systems. This project seeks to also have an impact on research in switch and router architectures for local area and wide area networks. The increasing use of the Internet as a commercial infrastructure with rising demands for differentiated services for users with widely varying requirements provides an additional motivation for this research. This research focuses on developing novel scheduling disciplines, buffering strategies and routing algorithms for high performance with fairness. In addition, the research addresses the requirements of global fairness and investigates novel system-level solutions. The methodology used is based both on the development of analytical proofs of new hypotheses and on simulation-driven verification. The simulation code libraries developed as part of this project will serve as instructional tools in graduate and undergraduate courses.