On Static Node Failure Disconnection in Interconnect Networks

Massively parallel systems are often composed of hundreds or thousands of components (such as routers, channels and connectors) that collectively possess failure rates higher than what arise in the ordinary systems. For these systems, new measures have been introduced that can evaluate the capability of a system for gracefully degradation. In the design of such systems, one of the most fundamental considerations is the reliability of their interconnected networks, which can be usually characterized by connectivity of the network topological structure. Resilience of graphs and various types of deterministic networks have attracted significant attention in the research literature. A classical problem in this line of study is to understand failure conditions which the network disconnects and/or starts to offer noticeably lower performance (such as increased routing distance) to its users. In this paper, we investigate the problem of network disconnection by means of simulation in the context of large-scale interconnect networks and understand how static patterns of node failure affect the resilience of such networks.

Keywords:

Fault-tolerance , Interconnect networks , Network disconnection , and Network reliability