Design of a Parallel Computer Network Interface Controller

  • Lee, Sung-Gu (Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology)
  • Published : 1997.06.01

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a network interface controller (NIC) chip which is to be used to support a novel adaptive virtual cut-through routing method for parallel compute systems with direct (i.e., point-to-point) interconnection networks. The NIC chip is designed to provide the interface between a processing node constructed from commercially available microprocessors and another custom-designed router chip, which in turn performs the actual routing of packets to their respective destinations. The NIC, designed using a semi-full-custom VLSi design technique outperform traditional wormhole routing with a minimal amount of hardware overhead. The NIC design has been fully simulated and laid out using a 0.8$\mu\textrm{m}$ CMOS process.

Keywords

References

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