Prioritized Multiprocessor Networks: Design and Performance

This paper proposes and evaluates prioritized direct shared-memory multiprocessor networks. We use three components to implement prioritized networks, namely, priority-based link arbitration, priority inheritance , and dynamic virtual channels. The two major results from our study are: (i) adding priorities to direct shared-memory multiprocessor networks can lead to reduced average transaction latencies and increased system throughput when running traditional parallel applications, and (ii) a prioritized multipro-cessor network can be used to reduce the worst-case latencies of time-constrained traac when it co-exists with best-eeort traac, without penalizing the average performance of best-eeort traac.