Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks

CHAPTER 20

Network Interfaces

The interface between an interconnection network and the network client can often

be a major factor in the performance of the interconnection network. A well-designed

network interface is unobtrusive — enabling the client to use the full bandwidth at

the lowest latency offered by the network itself. Unfortunately, many interfaces are

not so transparent. A poorly designed interface can become a throughput bottleneck

and greatly increase network latency.

In this chapter, we look briefly at the issues involved in three types of net-

work interfaces. Processor-network interfaces should be designed to provide a high-

bandwidth ...