Design and Evaluation of Communication Processors supporting Message Passing in Distributed Memory Systems

The number of design decisions for connecting processor nodes within MIMD systems is rather large. This paper systematically introduces the most important design parameters for communication processors in MIMD systems. Together, these parameters span a multidimensional design space. Points in this space are clarijied through classijication of a number of existing communication processors. The design choices made for these processors are reviewed and their performance is evaluated. Suitable choices of the design parameters are highly influenced by application behavior. Ideally one would like to design processors which cover a whole area in this design space. A companion paper describes a scalable andflexible design currently being realized at our laboratory.