Designing SANs to Support Low-Fanout Multicasts

Abstract. System area networks (SANs) need to support low-fanout multicasts efficiently in addition to broadcasts and unicasts. A critical component in SANs is the switch, which is commonly designed around crossbars. We present new switch designs using a combination of low-cost multistage switching fabrics and input and output buffering with hardware based packet scheduling mechanism. Using detailed simulations, we show that the proposed designs can scale to 512-ports and outperform crossbar based designs in a 4-switch SAN.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: HIPC
• Authors: Rajendra V. Boppana, Rajesh Boppana, Suresh Chalasani
• Keywords: Crossbar Based Designs, HIPC 2003, Multistage Switching Fabrics, System Area Networks