On-line fault identification in multistage interconnection networks

If a multistage interconnection network (MIN) has faulty switching elements, the data may be blocked or may go along an incorrect path. In this paper, we propose an on-line fault identification method for automatically locating the faulty switch modules (i.e. the faulty IC chips). This method has the following advantages: (1) it makes use of the available real-time information for fault detection and it does not increase the communication overhead except during blockage testing; (2) the designer can tradeoff between the overhead of blockage testing and the average duration between fault occurrence and fault detection; and (3) it can be implemented as fairly simple hardware which can be included in the same chip of the switch module.