Performance analysis of buffering schemes in wormhole routers

Wormhole switched input-buffered and middle-buffered routers with virtual channels are analyzed in this paper. Middle buffering refers to the placement of virtual channels between the demultiplexers and multiplexers of a crossbar switch. An analytical model for multistage interconnection networks using middle-buffered switches is developed. In addition, extensive simulation is conducted to assess the performance of the two buffering techniques in different network topologies. The study demonstrates that middle buffering with virtual channels provides better performance than input buffering with virtual channels in multistage interconnection networks, two-dimensional meshes, and hypercubes.