5. Appendix: interconnection networks

The interconnection networks used in parallel architectures have a number of characteristics, the main ones being as follows:

• topology is the way in which nodes are interconnected;

• the diameter is the minimum distance between the most distant nodes, measured in number of steps through successive nodes;

• the bisection rate is the number of connections to be cut to divide the network into two parts ;

• latency is the transmission delay between two nodes;

• blocking or non-blocking. A non-blocking network allows any available source node to be linked to any available destination node;

• material cost ;

• etc.

The interconnection...