BLOCKING PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE WORMHOLE ROUTED INTERCONNECTION NETWORKS
Xi Liu, Ncic Joint · Chinese Journal of Computers · 1999
Blocking affects the performance of a wormhole routed interconnection network to a great degree. This paper investigates the network performance with blocking being present. We define a novel performance metric blocking ratio, which exactly measures the blocking status in the network. Using this metric, we identify network statuses of 2D meshes under blocking. 8×8, 10×10, 16×16, 20×20 and 32×32 meshes are examined. We conclude that the network performance decreases non linearly with the blocking ratio. The network behavior can be classified into three categories, each corresponding to a certain area in the blocking performance graph. These areas are the zero area, the linear area, and the saturate area, in which the network performance is not affected, linearly offset, or nullified by the blocking respectively. There exists a load threshold at which the working network goes out of function.