Towards a synthesis of direct and indirect cube structures for multiprocessors

The author characterizes the exact structural relationship between the hypercube and the multistage indirect n-cube network, two popular interconnection structures for multiprocessors. He shows that the multistage networks can be viewed as direct connections of nodes (each node being a process-memory-switch combination) and that all of the performance difference between the two interconnection schemes in a stochastic environment can be attributed to the architecture of their nodes. This relationship is shown to extend to both nonbinary networks and redundant-path multistage networks, the latter resulting in augmented hypercube topologies. By varying the node architecture the author shows that there exists a series of structures between the full direct and indirect schemes with different cost and performance levels. Static performance analyses indicate that for best cost/performance ratios, and intermediate architecture (between a full direct and a full indirect cube) needs to be chosen.<>