Class network routing

US7587516B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• International Business Machines Corporation · US

Inventors

• Gyan Bhanot · Princeton, US
• Matthias A. Blumrich · Ridgefield, US
• Dong Chen · Scarsdale, US
• Paul W. Coteus · Yorktown Heights, US
• Alan Gara · Mount Kisco, US
• Mark E. Giampapa · Dobbs Ferry, US
• Philip Heidelberger · Somers, US
• Burkhard Steinmacher-Burow · Eßlingen, DE
• Todd E. Takken · Brewster, US
• Pavlos M. Vranas · Mount Kisco, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Feb 25, 2002
• Grant date: Sep 8, 2009
• Expiry date: Sep 16, 2024

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y02B30/70
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Class network routing is implemented in a network such as a computer network comprising a plurality of parallel compute processors at nodes thereof. Class network routing allows a compute processor to broadcast a message to a range (one or more) of other compute processors in the computer network, such as processors in a column or a row. Normally this type of operation requires a separate message to be sent to each processor. With class network routing pursuant to the invention, a single message is sufficient, which generally reduces the total number of messages in the network as well as the latency to do a broadcast. Class network routing is also applied to dense matrix inversion algorithms on distributed memory parallel supercomputers with hardware class function (multicast) capability. This is achieved by exploiting the fact that the communication patterns of dense matrix inversion can be served by hardware class functions, which results in faster execution times.