Patent ID: 7957400

Claim:
A network comprising: a hierarchical structure of nodes comprising n layers including n−1 layers of switch nodes and 1 layer of computational nodes where n is an integer greater than 1 and where each layer in the structure includes a maximum of m n-L nodes grouped into units, where m represents a number of nodes in a unit and is an integer greater than 1 and each unit has a same number of nodes and where L represents a layer in the structure and is an integer with L=0 representing a lowest layer and L=n−1 representing a highest layer; where each node in a layer other than the computational layer comprises a switch node for a unit in a next lower layer in the structure; and where for each unit: each node in the unit is connected to each other node in the unit by a point to point link; each node in the unit is connected to a local switch node for the unit by a point to point link; and each node in the unit is connected to each other node in the unit and to the local switch node by a local broadcast network for the unit.