A New Family of Hybrid Topologies for Large-Scale Interconnection Networks

Abstract

In large supercomputers the topology of the interconnection network is a key design issue that impacts the performance and cost of the whole system. Direct topologies provide a reduced hardware cost, but as the number of dimensions is conditioned by 3D wiring restrictions, a high number of nodes per dimension is used, which increases communication latency and reduces network throughput. On the other hand, indirect topologies can provide better performance for large network sizes, but at the cost of a high amount of switches and links. In this paper we propose a new family of topologies that combines the best features of both direct and indirect topologies to efficiently connect an extremely high number of nodes. In particular, we propose an n-dimensional topology where the nodes of each dimension are connected through a small indirect topology. This combination results in a family of topologies that provides high performance, with latency and throughput figures of merit close to indirect topologies, but with a lower hardware cost. In particular, it is able to double the throughput obtained per switching element of indirect topologies. Moreover, the layout of the topology is much simpler than in indirect topologies. Indeed, its fault-tolerance degree is equal or higher than the one for direct and indirect topologies.