Abstract: Message passing interconnection networks are widely used under various conditions, with the scales ranging from VLSI internal bus to WAN. In this paper, message passing mechanism and routing algorithm in a message passing interconnection network—3D-torus interconnection network are discussed. A combination of DOR and partial adaptive routing algorithm with deadlock-free and livelock-free characteristics are presented. Two typical message-passing mechanisms, virtual cut-through and store-and-forward, are investigated to evaluate the performance. Test and comparison between the message passing mechanisms and routing algorithms in a simulator of 3D-torus topology show that the proposed partial adaptive routing algorithm can improve the network performance in terms of transmission latency and throughput, and also show that different message passing mechanisms will definitively affect the network transmission efficiency.

Key words: 3D-torus, message passing mechanism, routing algorithm, virtual cut-through, message passing network