On Bufferless Routing of Variable Length Messages in Leveled Networks

We study the most general communication paradigm on a multiprocessor, wherein each processor has a distinct message (of possibly distinct lengths) for each other processor. We study this paradigm, which we call chatting, on multiprocessors that do not allow messages once dispatched ever to be delayed on their routes. By insisting on oblivious routes for messages, we convert the communication problem to a pure scheduling problem. We introduce the notion of a virtual chatting schedule, and we show how eecient chatting schedules can often be produced from eecient virtual chatting schedules. We present a number of strategies for producing eecient virtual chatting schedules on a variety of network topologies.