The minimal routing problem in mesh-connected multicomputers with faulty blocks is studied. Two-dimensional meshes are used to illustrate the approach. A sufficient condition for minimal routing in 2D meshes with faulty blocks is proposed. Unlike many traditional models that assume all the nodes know global fault distribution, our approach is based on the concept of an extended safety level, which is a special form of limited fault information. The extended safety level information is captured by a vector associated with each node. When the safety level of a node reaches a certain level (or meets certain conditions), a minimal path exists from this node to any nonfaulty nodes in 2D meshes. Specifically, we study the existence of minimal paths at a given source node, limited distribution of fault information, and minimal routing itself. We propose three fault-tolerant minimal routing algorithms which are adaptive to allow all messages to use any minimal path. We also provide some general ideas to extend our approaches to other low-dimensional mesh-connected multicomputers such as 2D tori and 3D meshes. Our approach is the first attempt to address adaptive and minimal routing in 2D meshes with faulty blocks using limited fault information.
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