Chordal rings have been proposed in the past as networks that combine the simple routing framework of rings with the lower diameter, wider bisection, and higher resilience of other architectures. Virtually all proposed chordal ring networks are node-symmetric, i.e., all nodes have the same in/out degree and interconnection pattern. Unfortunately, such regular chordal rings are not scalable. In this paper, periodically regular chordal (PRC) ring networks are proposed as a compromise for combining low node degree with small diameter. By varying the PRC ring parameters, one can obtain architectures with significantly different characteristics (e.g., from linear to logarithmic diameter), while maintaining an elegant framework for computation and communication. In particular, a very simple and efficient routing algorithm works for the entire spectrum of PRC rings thus obtained. This flexibility has important implications for key system attributes such as architectural satiability, software portability, and fault tolerance. Our discussion is centered on unidirectional PRC rings with in/out-degree of 2. We explore the basic structure, topological properties, optimization of parameters, VLSI layout, and scalability of such networks, develop packet and wormhole routing algorithms for them, and briefly compare them to competing fixed-degree architectures such as symmetric chordal rings, meshes, tori, and cube-connected cycles.
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