Analyzing the impact of buffer capacity on crosspoint-queued switch performance

Abstract

We use both theoretical analysis and simulations to study the impact of crosspoint-queued (CQ) buffer size on CQ switch throughput and delay performance under different traffic models, input loads, and scheduling algorithms. In this paper, we present the following. 1) We prove the stability of CQ switch using any work-conserving scheduling algorithm. 2) We present an exact closed-form formula for the CQ switch throughput and a nonclosed- form but convergent formula for its delay using static nonwork- conserving random scheduling algorithms with any given buffer size under independent Bernoulli traffic. 3) We show that the above results can serve as a conservative guide on deciding the required buffer size in pure CQ switches using work-conserving algorithms such as the random scheduling, under independent Bernoulli traffic. 4) Furthermore, our simulation results under real-trace traffic show that simple round-robin and random workconserving algorithms can achieve quite good throughput and delay performance with a feasible crosspoint buffer size. Our work reveals the impact of buffer size on the CQ switch performance and provides a theoretical guide on designing the buffer size in pure CQ switch, which is an important step toward building ultra-highspeed switch fabrics.