Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks

CHAPTER 7

Slicing and Dicing

In this closing chapter of the section on topology, we briefly explore some pragmat-

ics of packaging a topology. We start by looking at concentrators and distributors.

Concentrators combine the traffic of several terminal nodes onto a single network

channel. They can be used when the traffic from any one terminal is too small to make

full use of a network channel. They are also effective in combining traffic from many

bursty terminals. When the ratio of peak to average traffic is large, using concentrators

results in lower serialization latency and a more cost-effective network.

Distributors are the opposite of concentrators ...