Performance and architectural features of segmented multiple bus system

The paper introduces a new class of bus-based systems called the Segmented Multiple Bus System (SMBS). The SMBS overcomes the architectural limitations of bus-based shared memory systems while maintaining their advantages in terms of high degree of fault tolerance, ease of expansion and ease of programming. In addition SMBSs are scalable; unlike conventional MBSs. Another interesting feature of the SMBS is that it supports wormhole routing which is traditionally used in direct network topologies. Using approximate mean value analysis, we evaluate performance in terms of processing efficiency and request response time. We show good scalability for the SMBS. The approach we adopt in developing the models is comprehensive in the sense that the models incorporate features of both direct and indirect networks. This makes our performance models easily adaptable to several other network topologies