EE382C Advanced Computer Organization:

Interconnection Networks - Spring 2010-11

Course Schedule

Number

  Date

Topic 

  Assignment

  Read

 

1

 

03/29

 

Introduction to interconnection networks. Walk through of a simple network.

 

 

Chapters 1 & 2

 

2

03/31 

 

Topology basics. Constraints and measures. Butterfly networks.

 

HW1: Topology

 

Chapters 3 & 4

 

04/05

Cube networks. Concentration and slicing.

Research paper assigned

Chapters 5 & 7 

04/07 

Non-blocking topologies.

 

Chapter 6

 

5

04/12 

Topology overflow and wrapup. Routing basics and taxonomy.

HW2: Routing and flow control. 

Chapters 8 & 9 

04/14 

Oblivious routing. Adaptive routing. Routing mechanisms. 

 

Chapters 10&11 

04/19 

Global adaptive routing. 

 

Chapter 12 

 

8

 

04/21

Flow control basics. Resources and allocation strategies. Circuit switching. Store and forward. Dropping flow control. Misrouting. Cut through. Wormhole flow control. Virtual channels.

HW3: Router architecture. 

 

 

9

 

04/26

Deadlock and livelock. Principles of deadlock. Buffer deadlock and channel deadlock. Deadlock in cyclic networks. Inter-dimension deadlocks. Avoiding deadlock with virtual-channels. The turn model. 

 

Chapter 14 

10 

 

04/28

Router microarchitecture. Basic router. Input buffers and buffer organization. Internal switch organization: crossbars, dimension-ordered and multi-stage. 

Project assignment. 

Chapter 16 

11 

05/03 

Midterm exam, in class.

Research paper due. 

 

 

12

05/05 

Router datapath components, router pipelining, router delay models. 

Chekpoint 1. 

Chapter 17 

 

13

 

05/10

 

Allocators. Arbiters. The allocation problem - allocating VCs to packets and bandwidth to flits. Bipartite matching. Naive allocation. Separable allocators. Wavefront allocation.

 

Chapters 18&19 

 

14

 

05/12

Network performance analysis. Analysis of networks with dropping flow control. Analysis of blocking. the effects of buffers. Simulation vs. analysis. The effects of traffic patterns. Load balance and route diversity.

 

Chapters 23-25 

15 

 

05/17

Reliability: Denifition of reliability and availability. Failure mechanisms and fault models. Path diversity. Pragmatics and self-healing. 

Checkpoint 2. 

Chapter 21 

16

05/19 

TBD

 

 

17 

05/24 

Project presentations. 

 

 

18 

05/26 

Project presentations.

 

 

19 

05/31 

Wrapup lecture .

 

 

 

 

 

Project due