An efficient buffer allocation technique for virtual lanes in InfiniBand networks

Abstract

InfiniBand Architecture(IBA) adopts a mechanism of Virtual Lanes(VL) to support various QoS, improve link utilization and avoid deadlock. IBA packets are placed in a buffer corresponding to each VL and are scheduled by a VL arbiter. Since the number of the packets through each VL may be different, the throughput can be improved by allocating buffers according to the packet characteristics. In this paper, a new buffer allocation scheme using VL arbitration table is proposed and the superiority of the network performance is shown through the simulation results.