Multichannel non-blocking system area network with direct channels

Abstract

An unblockable non-blocking self-routing network with direct channels has been developed, in which packet conflicts are resolved at the entrance to the network by the procedure of connecting sources to the first cascade of the network , providing a packet duality. Packets blocked during conflict resolution are retransmitted by sources with minimal delays. Within the network, the occurrence of conflicts is prevented by means of parallelization of the network itself. The network is designed in 2-, 4- and 8-stage versions with scaling of the number of channels from several hundred to many millions, keeping the same network performance. The network can provide 1- or 2-channel fault tolerance at the same link rate. The overhead cost of achieving these properties is higher complexity of the network, that becomes comparable to the complexity of the theoretical non-blocking Clos switch, which has no known practical implementation.The purpose of the proposed networks is photonic networks with routing information transmission in packet headers represented as one-time-use binary numbers. The proposed networks are made in an extended circuit basis, consisting of switches and separate multiplexers and demultiplexers. The paper presents the characteristics of the constructed networks with the specified method of presenting routing information.