Performance Analysis of the BusNet Protocol for Backplane Bus-Based Interprocessor Communication

Nowadays, backplane bus-based multiprocessor systems often utilize the standard network protocol such as TCP/IP for communication between processors on the backplane bus. In such systems, it is common for the backplane bus to emulate the standard MAC protocols such as CSMA/CD. This paper aims to analyze the performance of the MAC emulation-based backplane network by constructing queueing models based on detailed bus operations. For this purpose, we choose BusNet as a target protocol. BusNet is an ANSI standard network protocol and its specification contains basic bus operations commonly used in most backplane buses. We investigate the throughputdelay characteristics of BusNet. We also compare the packet delay in BusNet with the IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD network which BusNet is expected to be compatible with. The simulation result shows how an optimal block transfer scale can be determined in respect of the performance trade-off between BusNet and other real-time traffics.