A Power Model for Routers: Modeling Alpha 21364 and InfiniBand Routers

As interconnection networks proliferate to many new applications, a low-latency high-throughput fabric is no longer sufficient. Applications are becoming powerconstrained. In this paper, we propose an architecturallevel power model for interconnection network routers that will allow researchers and designers to easily factor in power when exploring architectural trade-offs. We applied our model to two commercial routers – the integrated Alpha 21364 router and the IBM 8-port 12X InfiniBand router, and show that the different micro-architectures lead to vastly different power consumption and distribution estimates.