Design and Implementation of a Packet Switched Routing Chip

摘要

Monsoon is a parallel processing dataflow computer that will require a highbandwidth interconnection network. A packet switched routing chip (PaRC) is described that will be used as the basis of this network. PaRC is a 4 by 4 routing switch which has been designed and fabricated as a CMOS gate array. PaRC will receive packets via one of its four input ports, store the packet in an on-chip buffer, and eventually transmit the packet via one of its four output ports. PaRC operates at 50 MHz, and each port has a bandwidth of 800 Mbits per second. Each input port operates asynchronously and has enough buffering to store four packets. The buffering and scheduling algorithms used in PaRC were designed to provide high utilization of the available bandwidth, while providing low latency for non-blocked packets. In addition, PaRC provides a mechanism whereby a processor can quickly receive acknowledgment when a message it sent has been received. Although the design of PaRC has been driven by the needs of Monsoon, PaRC has been designed to be suitable for a wide variety of communication networks. (Author)