
816 CHAPTER 10 Interconnection Network Design
Incoming flits ^^^
Flow control symbols *m—^^ ^^
STOP-
GO-
Empty %
^^ — Outgoing flits
FIGURE 10.35 Slack buffer operation. When the fill level drops below the low mark, a
GO symbol is sent to the source, and when it goes over the high mark, a STOP symbol is
generated.
increasing the amount of storage between the low and high marks in the input
buffer. This approach is used, for example, in Cal Tech routers (Seitz and Su 1993)
and the Myrinet commercial follow-on (Boden et al 1995). Similar techniques are
used in modems.
It is worth noting that the link-level flow control is used on host-switch link ...