Flow Control

Maurizio Palesi

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Flow Control
Flow Control determines how the resources
of a network, such as channel bandwidth
and buffer capacity are allocated to packets
traversing a network
Goal is to use resources as efficient as
possible to allow a high throughput
An efficient flow control is a prerequisite to
achieve a good network performance

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Flow Control
Flow Control can be viewed as a problem of
Resource allocation
Contention resolution
Resources in form of channels, buffers and
state must be allocated to each packet
If two packets compete for the same
channel flow control can only assign the
channel to one packet, but must also deal
with the other packet

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Flow Control
Flow Control can be divided into
Bufferless flow control
Packets are either dropped or misrouted
Buffered flow control
Packets that cannot be routed via the desired
channel are stored in buffers

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Circuit Switching

 Circuit-Switching is a bufferless flow control, where several channels

are reserved to form a circuit
 A request (R) propagates from source to destination, which is
answered by an acknowledgement (A)
 Then data is sent (here two five flit packets (D)) and a tail flit (T) is sent
to deallocate the channels

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Circuit Switching

 Circuit-switching does not suffer from dropping or misrouting packets

 However there are two weaknesses
 High latency: T0 = 3 H tr + L/b (ignoring wire latency)
 Low throughput, since channel is used to a large fraction of time for
signaling and not for delivery of the payload

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Buffered Flow Control
More efficient flow control can be achieved
by adding buffers
With sufficient buffers packets do not need to
be misrouted or dropped, since packets can
wait for the outgoing channel to be ready

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Buffered Flow Control
Two main approaches
Packet-Buffer Flow Control
Store-And-Forward
Cut-Through
Flit-Buffer Flow Control
Wormhole Flow Control
Virtual Channel Flow Control

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Data Units

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Store and Forward Flow Control

 Each node along a route waits until a packet is completely

received (stored) and then the packet is forwarded to the
next node
 Two resources are needed
Packet-sized buffer in the switch
Exclusive use of the outgoing channel T0 = H (tr + L/b)
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Cut-Through Flow Control

 Transmission on the next channel starts directly when the

new header flit is received (otherwise it behaves like Store-
Forward)
Channel is released after tail flit
T0 = H tr + L/b

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Cut-Through Flow Control
 Shortcomings
Very inefficient use of buffer space
 As buffers are allocated in units of packets
 Often we need multiple indipendent buffer sets to reduce blocking or
provide deadlock avoidance
By allocating buffers in units of packets  contention latency is
increased
 E.g., High-priority packet colliding with a low-priority packet
– Must wait the entire low-priority packet to be transmitted before it can
acquire the channel

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Wormhole Flow Control
 Wormhole flow control operates like cut-through, but with
channel and buffers allocated to flits rather than packets
 Three resources are needed
A virtual channel for the packet
 Body flits of a packet use the VC acquired by the head flit
One flit buffer
One flit channel bandwidth

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Wormhole - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 0 IP

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Wormhole - Example

H H

IP

Clock Cycle 1 IP

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Wormhole - Example

B H B

IP
H

Clock Cycle 2 IP

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Wormhole - Example

B H B

IP
B

H
Clock Cycle 3 IP

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Wormhole - Example

B H T

IP
B

B
Clock Cycle 4 IP

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Wormhole - Example

B B H

IP
T

B
Clock Cycle 5 IP

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Wormhole - Example

T B B H

IP

T
Clock Cycle 6 IP

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Wormhole - Example

T B B

IP

Clock Cycle 7 IP

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Wormhole - Example

T B

IP

Clock Cycle 8 IP

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Wormhole - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 9 IP

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Wormhole - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 10 IP

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Wormhole - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 11 IP

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Wormhole - Example
L1 L4
L5
L2
IP

L3 IP

 Blue packet  Green packet

 Injected at CC 0  Injected at CC 1
 Delivered at CC 7  Delivered at CC 11
 Latency 7 clock cycles  Latency 10 clock cycles

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Wormhole Flow Control
Comparison to cut-through
Wormhole flow control makes far more efficient
use of buffer space
Throughput maybe less, since wormhole flow
control may block a channels mid-packets

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Wormhole Flow Control

 The main advantage of wormhole to cut-through is that

buffers in the routers do not need to be able to hold full
packets, but only need to store a number of flits
 This allows to use smaller and faster routers

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Virtual Channel Flow Control
 In virtual channel flow-control several channels are
associated with a single physical channel
 This allows to use the bandwidth that otherwise is
left idle when a packet blocks the channel
 Unlike wormhole flow control subsequent flits are
not guaranteed bandwidth, since they have to
compete for bandwidth with other flits

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Concept of Virtual Channels

 A physical channel is shared by several virtual channels

 Naturally the speed of each virtual channel connection is
reduced

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Virtual Channel Flow Control

 There are several virtual channels for each physical

channel
 Packet A can use a second virtual channel and thus
proceed over channel p and q

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Virtual Channels - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 0 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → E
B

H H

IP

Clock Cycle 1 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → E VC0 → S
B
B

VC0 → E
IP
H

Clock Cycle 2 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → E VC0 → S
T VC1 → E
B

BB B

VC0 → E VC0 → L IP

H
Clock Cycle 3 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → E VC0 → S
T VC1 → L
VC1 → E
B

T B

VC0 → E VC0 → L IP
B

Clock Cycle 4 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → E VC0 → S
VC1 → L
VC1 → E
T

T B B

VC0 → E VC0 → L IP

B
Clock Cycle 5 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → E VC0 → S
VC1 → L
VC1 → E
T

VC0 → E VC0 → L IP
B

Clock Cycle 6 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC0 → S
VC1 → L
VC1 → E

T T
B

VC0 → E VC0 → L IP

B
Clock Cycle 7 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC1 → E VC1 → L

T
B

VC0 → L IP
T

Clock Cycle 8 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
VC1 → L

IP

T
Clock Cycle 9 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 10 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example

IP

Clock Cycle 11 IP

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Virtual Channels - Example
L1 L4

L5
L2
IP

L3 IP

 Blue packet  Green packet

 Injected at CC 0  Injected at CC 1
 Delivered at CC 10  Delivered at CC 11
 Latency 10 clock cycles  Latency 10 clock cycles

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