Multicast communication in wormhole-routed star graph interconnection networks
Multicast, an important communication mechanism, is frequently applied in parallel computing. The star graph interconnection network, when compared with the hypercube network, being with low degree and small diameter, has been recognized to be an attractive alternative to the popular hypercube network. In this paper, we derive a node labeling formula based on a hamiltonian path and propose four efficient multicast routing schemes in wormhole-routed star networks with multidestination routing capability. All of the four proposed schemes are path-based and deadlock-free. The first scheme, dual-path routing, sends the message in parallel through two independent paths (toward high label nodes and low label nodes). The second one, shortcut-node-based dual-path routing, is similar to dual-path routing except that the routing tries to find a shortcut node to route the message as soon as possible to reduce the length of transmission path. The third one, multipath routing, is a multiple dual-path routing strategy that includes source-to-relay and relay-to-destination phases. The last scheme, proximity grouping routing, is similar to multipath routing except that in the partitioning step of source and destination nodes the relation of spatial locality of nodes is also taken into account to reduce the length of transmission paths. Finally, the experimental results are given to show that the performance based on unicast-based and traditional hamiltonian-path routing schemes can be improved significantly by the four proposed routing schemes respectively.
multicast star graphs interconnection networks wormhole routing