Efficient Multicast on Myrinet using Link-Level Flow Control

This paper studies the implementation of efficient multicast protocols for Myrinet, a switched, wormhole-routed, Gigabit-per-second network technology. Since Myrinet does not support multicasting in hardware, multicast services must be implemented in software. We present a new, efficient, and reliable software multicast protocol that uses the network interface to efficiently forward multicast traffic. The new protocol is constructed on top of reliable, flowcontrolled channels between pairs of network interfaces. We describe the design of the protocol and make a detailed comparison with a previous multicast protocol. We show that our protocol is simpler and scales better than the previous protocol. This claim is supported by extensive performance measurements on a 64-node Myrinet cluster.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ICPP
• Authors: Raoul Bhoedjang, Tim Rühl, Henri E. Bal
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, Efficient Multicast Protocols, ICPP 1998, Multicast Protocol, Software Multicast Protocol