Polymorphic-Torus Network

This paper describes a new interconnection network for a massively parallel fine-grained SIMD system, called Polymorphic-torus, whose design goal was to provide high-communication bandwidth under a packaging constraint. This goal was achieved by the polymorphic principle which injects switches with the circuit-switching capability into every node of a base network (e.g., a two-dimensional torus). The polymorphic approach maintains the wiring complexity of the base network but effectively increases the communication bandwidth due to its flexibility in reconfiguring the switches individually and dynamically to match the algorithm graph. Formal analysis on interpackage wiring (the flux) and the intrapackage wiring (the fluid) is given for the Polymorphic-torus and the related torus networks. Three algorithms, namely, the Boolean, the Max/Min, and the Sum operations are developed to illustrate the use of the polymorphic principle in enhancing the communication bandwidth at no penalty of the interpackage wiring complexity. © 1989 IEEE