Hardware for Multiconnected Networks A Case Study.pdfVIP

Hardware for Multiconnected Networks: A Case Study G.Campobello (+) , G.Patan´e (+) , M.Russo (+) (+)Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Messina and INFN Catania,Italy; gcampo,gpatane,mrusso@ai.unime.it Abstract This paper presents the experimental results of a research project financed by INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics). The goal of this project is to realize a cluster of Personal Computers (PCs) suitable for distributed software in the field of nuclear physics. The developed hardware must have a low cost and must be able to interconnect 32 PCs with an expansion capacity of up to 100. Due to the requirements of this research project, it seems natural to look at it as an application of our general hardware architecture presented in [1]. Here, we present the results obtained and compare them with other works in literature. The results show that our architecture is preferable when low cost hardware and high performance are the goals. Keywords: Computer Communication Networks, Switching, Routing, Multicon- nected Networks, Digital Design. 1 Introduction The case study depicted below is part of a research project of the INFN. The objective of this project is the realization of a cluster of computers for the dis- tributed elaboration of algorithms related to nuclear physics. The performance of a cluster depends greatly on the sub-network of communication [2]. For this purpose research is directed to the development of network interfaces able to minimize the latency and maximize the throughput of communications. In particular, the principal points of the research concern: • the design of a new transmission medium and of the related transceivers with the aim of obtaining high-bandwidth links; • the study of new routing algorithms that use te