Deflection-Compensated Birkhoff-von-Neumann
Switches
Jinghui Zhang, Tong Ye, Tony T. Lee, Fangfang Yan, and Weisheng Hu
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks
Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China
{zjhrzbb, yetong, ttlee, yff, wshu}@sjtu.edu.cn
Abstract—Although the quasi-static scheduling based on
Birkhoff-von-Neumann (BvN) decomposition can achieve high
throughput with low operational complexity, its performance
becomes less predictable when the input traffic is bursty. In this
paper, we propose a deflection-compensated BvN (D-BvN) switch
to enhance the performance. The D-BvN switch provides capacity
guarantee for each virtual circuit (VC) by the BvN decomposition
of average input traffic matrix, while copes with traffic burst
by deflection. In particular, deflection scheme fully utilizes the
spare capacity of starving VCs to deflect overflow traffic to other
VCs and provide bandwidth for deflection traffic to re-access its
desired VC. Analytical and simulation results show that it can
achieve close to 100% throughput of offered load and the packet
out-of-sequence probability is also negligible.
Index Terms—input-queued switch, Birkhoff-von-Neumann
switch, scheduling, deflection, burst traffic
I. I NTRODUCTION
A good scheduler is indispensable for input-queued switch-
es to maximize throughput, reduce end-to-end delay, and lower
computational complexity.
In the past few years, a number of on-line algorithms [1]–[5]
were designed to assign connection patterns of the switching
fabric according to input packet requests on the fly. Although
these on-line algorithms can achieve 100% throughput, they
are not scalable when the number of input ports N and the
line rates are large.
Path switching, a quasi-static algorithm, was proposed in [6]
in order to provide capacity guarantee without computation
on the fly for each input/output (I/O) pair, or virtual circuit
(VC). Later in [7], it was also called Birkhoff-von-Neumann
(BvN) switching. In this algorithm, switch connection patterns
are periodically assigned according to a set of predetermined
permutation matrices calculated by average input traffic ma-
trix. The scalability is enhanced since connection patterns are
not computed on the fly. Also, [8] shows that this algorithm
can achieve 100% throughput and bounded end-to-end delay
as long as the input traffic is bounded by an arrival curve
[9].However, if the input traffic is bursty, the performance of
BvN switches becomes less predictable.
To deal with bursty traffic, [10], [11] introduce a two-stage
load-balanced BvN (LB-BvN) crossbar switch. The traffic
is evenly distributed to all outputs in the first stage and
N circular-shift permutations are repeatedly running in the
second stage. Thus, it has a complexity on the order of O(1)
and is able to cope with any traffic pattern. However, this
algorithm results in severe packet out-of-sequence at the output
even when the input traffic is smooth. Then, a number of
amendments were proposed to tackle this problem. However,
these methods require either additional hardware [12], [13] or
higher computational complexity [11], [14].
In this paper, we introduce a traffic deflection-compensated
mechanism to enhance quasi-static scheduling based on BvN
decomposition. Unlike immoderate traffic distribution in the
LB-BvN switches, only the overflow burst traffic is deflected
in our mechanism, thus the out-of-sequence probability is
significantly lowered. Besides, our algorithm can achieve close
to 100% throughput of the offered load and requires lower
end-to-end delay.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section II,
we briefly introduce the basic concepts of BvN switches and
discuss their drawbacks due to quasi-static scheduling. Moti-
vated by the discussion, we propose a deflection-compensated
switch architecture and the related scheduling algorithm. In
section III, the performance of our proposal is analyzed by
Markovian modulated fluid-flow model of input traffic and
ideal deflection approximation. Analytical and simulation re-
sults of minimum VOQ size requirement and out-of-sequence
probability are provided. Section IV concludes this paper.
II. P
RELIMINARY AND OUR PROPOSAL
A. BvN switch
An N × N BvN switch is plotted in Fig.1(a). N virtual
output queues (VOQs) are equipped at each input, where
VOQ
ij
denotes the VOQ that buffers packets from input
i to output j. The quasi-static scheduling algorithm of the
BvN switch is actually based on the Birkhoff-von-Neumann
decomposition theorem of doubly stochastic matrices [15].
According to the input traffic matrix [λ
ij
]
N×N
, where λ
ij
is
the average traffic rate from input i to output j, and
i
λ
ij
≤
1 and
j
λ
ij
≤ 1, we can always find a capacity matrix
[c
ij
]
N×N
that satisfies λ
ij
≤ c
ij
and
i
c
ij
=
j
c
ij
=1.
Based on BvN theorem [15], [c
ij
]
N×N
can be decomposed
into the linear combination of some permutation matrices,
each of which represents a connection pattern of the switch,
as illustrated in Fig.1(b).
Within a frame of F consecutive time slots, these prede-
termined connection patterns are scheduled according to their
weights in the BvN decomposition, as illustrated in Fig.1(c).
By periodically running these connection patterns, the BvN
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