A new hardware efficient link scheduling algorithm to guarantee QoS on clusters

Abstract

Contemporary router/switch technology for high-performance local/system area networks (LANs/SANs) should provide the capacity to fit the high bandwidth and timing requirements demanded by current applications. The MultiMedia Router (MMR) aims at offering hardware-based QoS support within a compact interconnection component. One of the key elements in the MMR architecture is the link scheduling algorithm. This algorithm must solve conflicts among data flows that share an input physical link. Required solutions are motivated by chances for parallelization and pipelining, while providing the necessary support both to multimedia flows and to best-effort traffic. In this work, a cost-aware link scheduling based on the temperature coding of priority value associated to every head flit is presented and evaluated. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.