On Deadlocks In Interconnection Networks

Deadlock avoidance-based and deadlock recovery-based routing algorithms have been proposed in recent years without full understanding of the likelihood and characteristics of actual deadlocks in interconnection networks. This work models the interrelationships between routing freedom, message blocking, correlated resource dependencies and deadlock formation. We empirically show that increasing routing freedom, as achieved by allowing unrestricted routing over multiple virtual channels, makes deadlocks highly improbable and reduces the likelihood of other types of correlated message blocking behavior that can degrade performance. Our results further substantiate that recovery-based routing algorithms have a higher potential performance advantage over deadlock avoidance-based routing algorithms which, inherently, allow less routing freedom.