The integrated MetaNet architecture: a switch-based multimedia LANfor parallel computing and real-time traffic

摘要

This work presents a coherent system solution for combining withno loss due to congestion, on one hand, bursty traffic withunpredictable pattern in time and space, and on the other hand, periodicreal-time or connection-oriented traffic with bandwidth guaranteedrequirements over fixed routes. This solution facilitates theimplementation of a scalable high performance multimedia system fordistributed/parallel computing with real-time interactive voice andvideo. The MetaNet real-time traffic has the following attributes: (1)guaranteed bandwidth with bounded delay, (2) fixed jitter-independent ofthe network size, (3) no loss due to congestion inside the network, (4)fixed path routing with FIFO order, and (5) support of complexperiodicity scheduling. At the same time, the underlying MetaNetasynchronous (bursty) traffic properties (provided by previous works)remain unchanged. Namely, any node can try to transmit asynchronously(bursty traffic), without reservation as much as it can, and the networkaccess and flow control ensure the following traditional LAN properties:(6) no loss with a single input buffer, (7) fair and deadlock-freeaccess, and (8) self-routing with broadcast. The self-routing on theMetaNet is a variant of deflection routing. It makes on-line routingdecisions based on the local flow of traffic (load conditions). Unlikeother deflection techniques, the MetaNet routing is along a global senseof direction, which guarantees that cells will reach their destinations.Thus, this method is called convergence routing