A Study of Switch Models for the Scalable Coherent Interface.
Bin Wu, A. Bogaerts, Bernhard Skaali · 1995
The Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) specifies a topology-independent communication protocol with the possibility of connecting up to 64 K nodes. SCI switches are the key components in building large SCI systems effectively. This paper presents four alternative architectures for a possible SCI switch implementation. Of these four models, two could be seen as crossbar-based switches. The main difference between the two crossbar switch models is the different structure of queues: either a parallel structure, called SwitchLink or serial, called CrossSwitch. The other two models are a ring-based switch model, which is actually connecting four ports into an internal SCI ring and a bus-based switch model which uses an internal bidirectional bus. We will describe each model in detail and compare them by simulation.