Metacube: a new interconnection network for large scale parallel systems
Yamin Li, Shietung Peng, Wanming Chu · 2002
The hypercube has been widely used as the interconnection network for parallel computers. However, in hypercubes, the number of communication links for each node is a logarithmic function of the total number of nodes. Therefore, the hypercube is not a good candidate for an interconnection network for a very large parallel computer that might contain hundreds of thousands of nodes due to IC technology and port number limitations. This paper introduces a new interconnection network for very large parallel computers called metacube (MC). An MC network has a 2-level cube structure. An MC(k, m) network can connect 2 m2k +k nodes with m + k links per node, where k is the dimension of the high-level cubes (classes) and m is the dimension of the low-level cubes (clusters). An MC network is a symmetric network with short diameter, easy and efficient routing and broadcasting similar to that of the hypercube. However, an MC network can connect millions of nodes with up to 6 links per node. An MC(2,3) with 5 links per node has 16,384 nodes and an MC(3,3) with 6 links per node has 134,217,728 nodes. We describe the MC network’s structure, topological properties and routing and broadcasting algorithms.