wormhole routing


wormhole routing

(messaging)A property of a message passing system in whicheach part of a message is transmitted independently and onepart can be forwarded to the next node before the wholemessage has been received. All parts of a single messagefollow the same route.

The independent parts are normally small, e.g. one 32-bitword. This reduces the latency and the storage requirementson each node when compared with message switching where anode receives the whole message before it starts to forward itto the next node. It is more complex than message switchingbecause each node must keep track of the messages currentlyflowing through it.

With cut-through switching, wormhole routing is applied topackets in a packet switching system so that forwarding ofa packet starts as soon as its destination is known, beforethe whole packet had arrived.