| Summary: | Thesis (M.Eng.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1996. Engineering and Applied Science Bibliography: leaves 119-125. Multistage Interconnection Networks (MINs) are being considered for use in switch fabrics of broadband packet switch architectures. Most of the MINs considered are based on 2 x 2 switching elements (SEs). Throughput performance is degraded mainly due to the basic size of the SEs. In this work, the Balanced Gamma (BG) network, a multipath MIN, which features 4 x 4 SEs has been studied in detail. Architecture, fault tolerance, reliability and hardware complexity of the BG network are compared with the 2-replicated 2-dilated Banyan (R2D2) networks and the Batcher Banyan (BB) networks. A new simple routing algorithm has been proposed for the BG network to enhance its fault tolerance capability. Switching performance is enhanced by increasing the size of the basic SEs and thereby providing multiple paths between each input-output pair of the BG network. The throughput performance of the BG network is studied under certain idealistic uniform and non-uniform traffic conditions. These performance results are compared with the R2D2 and the BB networks under the same traffic conditions. Performance analysis and simulation results have shown high throughput performance of the BG network even in the presence of an SE fault. It has been found that the fault tolerance properties, reliability and throughput performance of the BG network are much superior to those of the R2D2 and the BB networks. Due to increased throughput performance of the BG network it may be considered as a potential candidate for use in switch fabrics of broadband packet switch architectures.
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