Multicasting control and communications on multihop stack-ring OPS networks

We propose dynamic multicasting on an N=m.n processor; OPS-based stack-ring topology consisting of n processor groups, with m processors each. By considering multicasting, we realize the increased network bandwidth offered by one-to-many optical communications. We assume that each processor has infinite local and network buffers and that the system performs synchronously. Assuming shortest path routing and network packet priority we compute network throughput and latency measures as a function of the packet arrival rate. Balanced networks with m/spl ap/n offer higher throughput for uniform, multicast-free traffic. When the multicasting load and especially the locality of references increase, stack-ring systems with n>m offer higher throughput and reasonable latency. A high level of locality and multicasting are necessary for achieving stack-ring network scalability.