A deadlock-free fault-tolerant routing algorithm for N-dimesional meshes

Abstract

Fault tolerance is one of the most important issues for the design of cost-effective and high performance interconnection networks. In this paper, a new fault tolerance routing algorithm for n-dimensional meshes is presented. The presented algorithm is based on a planer fault model which only disables minimum fault-free nodes to form rectangular fault regions. The algorithm uses three virtual channels per physical channel and only employs a very simple deadlock avoidance scheme. In spit the variety fault regions in n-dimensional mesh, the presented algorithm is always connected as long as fault regions do not disconnect the network.