On the Characterization of Interconnection Networks with Irregular Topology : A New Model of Communication Cost

Networks of Workstations have become a cost-effective alternative to parallel computers. The characterization of these networks results quite difficult, since the traditional parameters used for regular topologies (node degree, diameter, average distance, etc.) do not provide information about the arrangement of the links. In this paper, we propose a new model of communication cost between network nodes. This model takes into account both the network topology and the routing algorithm, but it does not depend on the traffic pattern generated by the application running on the machine. The evaluation results show that our communication cost model is highly correlated with network performance. Since it provides a metric based on internode distance, our model can be used as the basis for both an efficient characterization of networks as well as an efficient mapping of processes to processors.