A Deadlock-Free Dynamic Reconfiguration Scheme for Source Routing Networks Using Close Up*/Down* Graphs

Computer performance has significantly increased in recent years and, consequently, communication subsystems have become bottlenecks within systems. To counter this problem, current high-performance distributed systems employ switch-based interconnection networks. In this scenario, after the occurrence of a topological change, a management mechanism must reestablish connectivity between network devices. This requires performing a network reconfiguration, which consists in updating the routing function. The main challenge involved in network reconfiguration is the reduction of performance degradation during the change assimilation process. As shown in the performance evaluation section, former reconfiguration techniques significantly reduce network service since the application traffic is temporally stopped in order to avoid deadlocks. In addition, current solutions are only designed for networks that use distributed routing. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a first reconfiguration method for source routing networks that does not restrict the injection of packets during the change assimilation process. Without requiring additional network resources, our scheme is able to recover topology connectivity maintaining network throughput.