An n1 x n2 switch consists of n1 input ports, n2 output ports, links connecting each input to every output, control logic to select a specific connection, and internal buffers.A switch is used to establish connections from the input ports to the output ports. These connections may be one-to-one, which ... Read More

Ethernet is a packet-switched LAN technology introduced by Xerox PARC in the early 1970s. Ethernet was designed to be a shared bus technology where multiple hosts are connected to a shared communication medium. All hosts connected to an Ethernet receive every transmission, making it possible to broadcast a packet to ... Read More

A cluster is a collection of stand-alone computers connected using some interconnection network. Each node in a cluster could be a workstation, personal computer, or even a multiprocessor system.A node is an autonomous computer that may be engaged in its private activities while at the same time cooperating with other ... Read More

Parallel applications can be designed using the client/server model. A client may divide a big application into several smaller problems that can be processed by multiple servers simultaneously. All the servers compute the solution to their respective problems and send their results to the client.The client assembles the results from ... Read More

Sockets are used to provide the capability of making connections from one application running on one machine to another running on a different machine. A socket abstraction consists of the data structure that holds the information needed for communication, and the system calls that manipulate the socket structure. Once a ... Read More

Several possible problems can result from the use of certain routing mechanisms in message-passing systems. These include deadlock, livelock, and starvation, which are as follows −Deadlock − When two messages each hold the resources required by the other to move, both messages will be blocked. This is called a deadlock. ... Read More

Routing is defined as the techniques used for a message to select a path over the network channels. Formally speaking, routing involves the identification of a set of permissible paths that may be used by a message to reach its destination, and a function, h, that selects one path from ... Read More

Shared memory systems can be designed using bus-based or switch-based interconnection networks. The simplest network for shared memory systems is the bus. The bus/cache architecture alleviates the requirement for expensive multiport memories and interface circuitry and the need to adopt a message-passing paradigm when developing application software.The bus may get ... Read More

Benchmark performance refers to the use of a set of integer and floating-point programs (known collectively as a benchmark) that are designed to test different performance aspects of the computing system(s) under test. Benchmark programs should be designed to provide fair and effective comparisons among high-performance computing systems. For a ... Read More

It is a point-to-point connection to other nodes or devices. All the network nodes are connected. Mesh has n (n-1)/2 physical channels to link n devices. Mesh architecture with wrap-around connections forms a torus. Several routing mechanisms have been used to route messages around meshes. One such routing mechanism is known as dimension-ordering routing. ... Read More