On the Influence of the Selection Function on the Performance of Fat-Trees

Fat-tree topology has become very popular among switch manufacturers. Routing in fat-trees is composed of two phases, an adaptive upwards phase, and a deterministic downwards phase. The unique downwards path to the destination depends on the switch that has been reached in the upwards phase. As adaptive routing is used in the ascending phase, several output ports are possible at each switch and the final choice depends on the selection function. The impact of the selection function on performance has been previously studied for direct networks and has not resulted to be very important. In fat-trees, the decisions made in the upwards phase by the selection function can be critical, since it determines the switch reached in the upwards phase, and therefore the unique downwards path to the destination. In this paper, we analyze the effect of the selection function on fat-trees. Several selection functions are defined, compared and evaluated. The evaluation shows that selection function has a great impact on fat-trees.