To support parallel processing of data-intensive applications, the interconnection network of a parallel/distributed machine must provide high end-to-end communication bandwidth and handle the bursty and concentrated communication patterns generated by dynamic load balancing and data collection operations. A large-scale interconnection network architecture called a virtual bus is proposed. The virtual bus can scale to terabits-per-second end-to-end communication bandwidth with low queuing delay for nonuniform traffic. A terabit virtual bus architecture can be efficiently implemented for less than 5% of the total cost of an eight-thousand-node system. In addition, the virtual bus has an open system parallel interface that is flexible enough to support up to gigabytes per second data transfer rates, different grades of services, and broadcast operation. Such flexibility makes the virtual bus a plausible open system communication backbone for a broad range of applications.
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