Deadlock avoidance for wormhole based switches

This paper considers the architecture of switches. In particular we study how virtual cut-through and wormhole networks can be used as the switch internal interconnect. Introducing such switches into a deadlock free interconnect may give rise to new deadlocks. Previously, to reason that no deadlocks are created, the resulting system was considered globally, that is, the interconnects of the switches themselves was considered as part of the system. Using flow control across the switch will eliminate the possibility of creating new deadlocks, and further global reasoning will not be necessary.