Thinking Machines Corporation

George G Robertson

W Daniel Hillis

Guy Lewis Steele, Jr

Brewster A Kahle

A message packet router is describes that performs the functions of determining if a message packet is addressed to circuitry associated with the router, of routing message packets to their destination if possible and of storing message packets that cannot be routed on because of circuit conflicts. The router also provides additional functions of merging message packets addressed to the same destination, of saving the state of the router at each significant point in the message routing cycle, and of running the entire routing cycle backwards. This later feature makes it possible to broadcast message packets selectively to certain processors in the array.

Method and apparatus for routing message packets

In accordance with the invention, each element or mode in the n-dimensional connection pattern is assigned a unique binary number or address by numbering the elements. Next, the individual binary digits of the address associated with each element are assigned to the different dimensions of the connection pattern of m dimension according to a fixed rule. Each set of binary digits that is so assigned to a dimension is then treated as the address of the node in that dimension in a gray code space; and the nodes that are its nearest neighbors in that dimension are those nodes that bear the Gray code values immediately before it and immediately after it in the Gray code sequence. Data are then routed to the nearest neighbor in one direction in a dimension by forwarding them from one node to the node bearing the next succeeding (or preceding) Gray code address and a node can be conditioned to receive such data by having it look for data from the node with the next preceding (or succeeding) address.

Method and apparatus for simulating m-dimension connection networks in

A message packet router is described that performs the functions of determining if a message packet is addressed to circuitry associated with the router, of routing message packets to their distination if possible and of storing message packets that cannot be routed on because of circuit conflicts. The router also provides additional functions of merging message packets addressed to the same destination, of saving the state of the router at each significant point in the message routing cycle, and of running the entire routing cycle backwards. This later feature makes it possible to broadcast message packets selectively to certain processors in the array.

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Marblehead, MA, United States of America

George G Robertson