Patent ID: 7957385

Claim:
A method of routing a packet in a network, the network having a topology characterized by a hierarchical structure of nodes comprising n layers wherein n is an integer greater than 1 and each of the n layers is represented by L being an integer from 0 to n−1 with L=0 representing a lowest layer and L=n−1 representing a highest layer in the hierarchical structure and wherein the n layers comprise n−1 layers of switch nodes and 1 layer of computational nodes, the method comprising: receiving at least a packet header of a packet at a first node, wherein the first node is a switch node included in the layer of switch nodes represented by L; based on a destination address included in the packet header, determining whether to transmit the packet to a second node in either layer L, layer L+1, or layer L−1; and beginning transmission of the packet to the second node without waiting to receive the entire packet at the first node and without copying the packet prior to transmission from the first node; wherein the destination address identifies a destination comprising a computational node included in the 1 layer of computational nodes and the packet is not copied to a memory until received at the destination comprising the computational node.