Multi-connection networks
Gerald M. Masson · 1974
Many applications involving the manipulation of large amounts of data or the interconnection of various subsystems into specific configurations employ the use of connection networks. Accordingly, a number of impressive results have been developed by the researchers in this field concerning the analysis and design of such networks. However, the vast majority of this work has dealt almost exclusively with a class of connection requirements for which at any time each input to the network is required to have at most one connection to the outputs of the network. It is becoming increasingly evident that there are a significant number of important applications for which this one-to-one type of connecting capability is not sufficient and for which a one-to-many or many-to-many type of connecting capability is needed instead. Networks capable of handling such requirements will be referred to as multi-connection networks, and this paper will consider their analysis and design. Aspects of the extension of existing work concerning the one-to-one type networks will be discussed. In addition, an approach will be described to the design of such networks which results in a new class of structures having multiple connection capability.