Design and Implementation of Xcent-Net

  • Published : 1997.12.01

Abstract

Xcent-Net is a new system network designed to support a clustered SMP called SPAX(Scalable Parallel Architecture based on Xbar) that is being developed by ETRI. It is a duplicated hierarchical crossbar network to provide the connections among 16 clusters of 128 nodes. Xcent-Net is designed as a packet switched, virtual cut-through routed, point-to-point network. Variable length packets contain up to 64 bytes of data. The packets are transmitted via full duplexed, 32-bit wide channels using source synchronous transmission technique. Its plesiochronous clocking scheme eliminates the global clock distribution problem. Two level priority-based round-robin scheme is adopted to resolve the traffic congestion. Clear-to-send mechanism is used as a packet level flow control scheme. Most of functions are built in Xcent router, which is implemented as an ASIC. This paper describes the architecture and the functional features of Xcent-Net and discusses its implementation.

Keywords

References

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