A new modelling approach of wormhole-switched networks with finite buffers

Owing to its simple router design and insensitivity to the message distance, wormhole switching has been employed not only in networks for contemporary multicomputers but also, in networks for clusters of workstations, and more recently in networks for systems-on-chips. Although analytical performance models for wormhole-switched networks have been widely reported in the literature, most of these models have assumed no (or negligible) buffers at a given router in order to ease the derivation of the model. In this paper, we propose a new simple and yet accurate model to capture the effects of finite buffers on the performance of wormhole-switched networks. Simulation experiments demonstrate the validity of the suggested model under various operating conditions.