Chordal rings as fault-tolerant loops

The loop is a commonly used interconnection network for computer systems. In this paper the authors consider the problem of making a loop network fault-tolerant. Previous solutions employ the absolute minimum number of redundant components, for a specified level of fault-tolerance. In the present approach, ‘extra’ redundancy is used to reduce the size and complexity of the interconnection network. Designs based on chordal rings are presented which can tolerate one and two processor failures. The examples given indicate that for large scale systems, the approach can produce improvement over previous approaches, yielding designs which are more in accord with the limitations of current technology.