Implementing Multidestination Worms in Switch-Based Parallel Systems: Architectural Alternatives and their Impact
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Abstract
Multidestination message passing has been proposed as an attractive mechanism for efficiently implementing multicast and other collective operations on direct networks. However, applying this mechanism to switch-based parallel systems is non-trivial. In this paper we propose alternative switch architectures with differing buffer organizations to implement multidestination worms on switch-based parallel systems. First, we discuss issues related to such implementation (deadlock-freedom, replication mechanisms, header encoding, and routing). Next, we demonstrate how an existing central-buffer-based switch architecture supporting unicast message passing can be enhanced to accommodate multidestination message passing. Similarly, implementing multidestination worms on an input-buffer-based switch architecture is discussed. Both of these implementations are evaluated against each other as well as against a software-based scheme using the central buffer organization. Simulation experiments und..