Ariadne—an adaptive router for fault-tolerant multicomputers
J. De V. Allen, Patrick T. Gaughan, David E. Schimmel, S. Yalamanchili · International Symposium on Computer Architecture · 1994
Adaptive routing has been proposed as a means of improving performance and fault-tolerance in multicomputer networks. While a number of algorithms have been proposed, few adaptive routers have been implemented in hardware. This paper presents the design and implementation of Ariadne --- a prototype single chip, hardware router. The primary motivation is tolerance to link and router failures, while reconciling conflicting demands on performance. This is achieved by implementing the m-misroute backtracking protocol (MB-m) using the pipelined circuitswitching (PCS) communication mechanism[17]. Ariadne implements two virtual data channels and one virtual control channel per physical link. The router is self-timed with single flit buffering at the input and output ports, and is fully adaptive.