Low jitter guaranteed-rate communications for cluster computing systems

  • Authors:
  • Ted H. Szymanski;Dave Gilbert

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.;Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Low latency high bandwidth networks are key components in largescale computing systems. Existing systems use dynamic algorithmsfor routing and scheduling cell transmissions through switches. Dueto stringent time requirements, dynamic algorithms have suboptimalperformances, which limit throughputs to well below peak capacity.It is shown that Guaranteed-Rate communications can be supportedover switch-based networks with 100% throughput and very low delayjitter, provided that each switch has the capacity to buffer asmall number of cells per flow. An algorithm is used to reserveguaranteed bandwidth and buffer space in the switches, resulting inthe specification of a doubly stochastic traffic rate matrix foreach switch. Each switch schedules the Guaranteed-Rate traffic fortransmission according to a resource reservation algorithm based onRecursive Fair Stochastic Matrix Decomposition. Very low delayjitters can be achieved among all simultaneous flows whilesimultaneously achieving 100% throughput in each switch. Whenreceive buffers of bounded depth are used to filter residualnetwork jitter at the destinations, end-to-end traffic flows can bedelivered with essentially zero delay jitter. The algorithm issuitable for the switch-based networks found in commercialsupercomputing systems such as Fat Trees, and for siliconNetworks-on-a-Chip.