Abstract:

One of the primary objects in designing high performance interconnection networks is to reduce the communication latency.Virtual cutthrough is an effective latencytolerant technique.But under the condition of limited input buffering,it is a challenge to implement the reliable link layer with the high speed.We present a method to conquer this problem and support virtual cutthrough switching with link layer,reducing the unnecessary buffering in an intermediate node.It combines the efforts of packet format, sender manager and receiver manager.Firstly, an extra cyclic redundancy code is included in packet header to protect the information;secondly, a link level retry is provided to reduce the time and protocol overhead involved in the endtoend retry;thirdly,with the effective implementation receiver,and especially the inputbuffer,we avoid the buffer overflow and the flow control corruption.

Key words: interconnection network;communication latency;virtual cutthrough;link level retry;cyclic redundancy code