Parallel Computer Architecture

62 CHAPTER 1 Introduction

All that matters is the total round-trip time. However, in the case where multiple

operations are issued in a pipelined fashion, each of the components has a specific

influence on the delivered performance.

Indeed, every individual component along the communication path can be

described by its delay and its occupancy. The network delay is simply the sum of the

delays along the path. The network occupancy is the maximum of the occupancies

along the path. For interconnection networks, an additional factor arises because

many transfers can take place simultaneously. If two of these transfers attempt to use

the same resourc ...