Optimal centralized algorithms for store-and-forward deadlock avoidance

A problem of deadlock avoidance in store-and-forward networks with at least two buffers per node is considered for fixed as well as dynamic routing. For both cases polynomial time, centralized deadlock avoidance algorithms are proposed and shown to be optimal in a sense of possible buffer utilization. When the number of buffers is equal to one for each node the problem is known to be NP-complete, thus, unlikely to admit a polynomial-time algorithm. The presented results may be also interesting for other applications, some massively parallel computer systems being one of the examples.