A Handbook of High-Radix Combined Switches

The interconnection network design is determined by available technology, whose recent advances have significantly evolved basic network components as links and switches. The latter are characterized by their number of ports that is the main subject of this book. Our efforts are focused on describing an alternative solution for building high-radix switches, which consist in combining several low-radix switches. The book addresses two significant challenges of these switches: to determine the appropriate internal configuration, and to estimate the sufficient bandwidth for interconnecting low-radix switches. The most remarkable contribution is the development of a new methodology for obtaining the optimal configurations of the Combined switches. The viability and potential of this alternative are evaluated considering aspects like the network performance and cost. Such evaluation has been driven by comparing these aspects for single-chip-based and Combined-switch-based networks. In particular, optimal and non-optimal configurations for Combined switches are considered. Moreover, single-chip switches of different radixes are used to perform the comparison among the networks.