Arctic Routing Chip

Arctic is a 4x4 packet routing chip being developed for the *T multiprocessor. Arctic can be used to implement a variety of staged networks and will be used to implement a fat tree network for *T. Arctic meets the requirements of *T and of a wide class of systems. This paper discusses the key features of Arctic. These include its buuering scheme which enables very high utilization of network links and its test and control system which provides error detection, limited error handling, and in-circuit testability.