Reconfigurable FLUX networks

Abstract

Using the existing reconfigurable network infrastructure of FPGAs, the reconfigurable FLUX interconnection networks was presented. That is, networks where the processing elements, forming a parallel system, have interconnects that are explicitly formed by request using reconfigurable fabric, rather than being fixed. Several experiments were performed to show the viability of our approach using the existing FPGA infrastructure (Virtex2Pro). The FLUX networks were compared against rigid/fixed networks using synthetic benchmarks. Experimental results show that reconfiguring the network to suit a given traffic pattern can be up to 2.6 and 5.5 times faster than a rigid mesh and binary tree network, respectively. In addition, the reconfiguration overhead can become negligible, given a traffic load that runs for sufficient time. This clearly shows that, based on the traffic pattern, different network configurations might be suitable. The implication of the above is that changing interconnects on demand could be beneficial