COMPUTATION AVAILABILITY OF CROSSBAR SYSTEMS IN A NONUNIFORM TRAFFIC ENVIRONMENT

Multiprocessor systems can provide higher performance, reliability, an d availability than single processor systems. In order to properly ass ess the effectiveness of multiprocessor systems, measures that combine performance and reliability are needed. Most previous studies have co nsidered the performance and reliability/availability separately. Only a limited number of studies have been carried out by considering the performance and reliability together in the presence of a uniform traf fic in the network. Hot spots in a multiprocessor system result in a n on uniform traffic in the network and results in a degradation in the performance of the network. The aim of this paper is to study the comb ined performance and reliability of a crossbar system in the presence of a hot spot in the system. Computation availability is taken as the criteria for measuring the combined performance and reliability. Marko v chain models have been developed to compute the above measurement cr iteria.