RESTRICTION-FREE ADAPTIVE WORMHOLE ROUTING IN MULTICOMPUTER NETWORKS

The adaptive routing approach has been expected as a promising way to improve network performance by utilizing available network bandwidth. Previous adaptive routing strategies in wormhole-routed multicomputer networks restrict the routing of messages by the routing algorithm to prevent deadlock. This results in low degree of adaptivity and low uti lization of physical or virtual channels. In this paper, we examine th e possibility of performing restriction-free adaptive routing in wormh ole-routed networks as an approach to further improving the performanc e of these networks. A new how control policy, called message cutting- in, is proposed, and two adaptive routing strategies are presented. Fr eedom of communication deadlock is achieved by the proposed flow contr ol policy. The proposed adaptive routing strategies do not restrict ro uting and maximally utilize the physical and virtual channels. Simulat ion results show that the restriction-free adaptive routing approach i s promising from the fact that it has the lowest latency and highest t hroughput depending on the number of virtual channels per physical cha nnel and patterns of message traffic.