It is well known that the hypercube has a rich set of good properties,
and consequently it has been recognized an ideal structure for parall
el computation. Nevertheless, according to the current VLSI technology
, the implementation feasibility of the hypercube remains questionable
when the size of the hypercube becomes large. Recent research efforts
have been concentrated on finding good alternatives to the hypercube.
The star graph was shown having many desirable properties of the hype
rcube, and in several aspects, the star graph is better than the hyper
cube. However, we observe that the star graph as a network has several
disadvantages, compared with the hypercube. In this paper, we propose
a class of new networks, the star-hypercube hybrid networks (or the S
H networks). The SH network is a simple combination of both the star g
raph and the hypercube. This class of networks contains the star graph
and the hypercube as subclasses. We show that the SH network is an ef
ficient and versatile network for parallel computation, since it share
s properties of both the hypercube and the star graph, and remedies se
veral major disadvantages of the hypercube and the star graph. This cl
ass of networks provide more flexibility in choosing the size, degree,
number of vertices, degree of fault tolerance, etc. in designing mass
ively parallel computing structures feasible for VLSI implementations.