Empirical Analysis of Isotach Networks

This paper presents the results of a simulation study designed to evaluate the performance of isotach networks. An isotach network is an interconnection network that provides hardware support for atomicity and sequential consistency in parallel computations. The results show conventional networks are more efficient than isotach networks under a workload with no atomicity or sequencing constraints, but that when such constraints are a significant factor in the workload, isotach networks outperform conventional networks. Isotach networks perform best in relation to conventional networks when execution is required to be sequentially consistent, data dependent operations are far enough apart that they do not restrict pipelining, contention for shared variables is high, and atomic actions are large. When two or more of these characteristics apply to the workload, isotach networks can outperform conventional networks by an order of magnitude or more.
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Reynolds, Jr, C Williams, and R Wagner. "Empirical Analysis of Isotach Networks." University of Virginia Dept. of Computer Science Tech Report (1992).