A crucial component of a massively parallel multicomputer is the interconnection network which links all of the nodes of the computer together. This network provides the primary method of communication between the hundreds or thousands of processing nodes and is, thus, critical to the performance of the multicomputer. In this thesis, several factors that characterize interconnection networks are identified and discussed : latency, network topology, routing method, flow control method, and switching method. Several switching techniques for static networks are reviewed and compared with wormhole routing. Wormhole routing is the most promising switching strategy used in new generation multicomputers. Wormhole routing eliminates the need for large packet buffers in routers and operates distance insensitive network latency. But it is susceptible to deadlock. To avoid deadlock, there are several routing methods - deterministic routing, adaptive routing - according to network interconnection topologies, mesh, torus, hypercube, so on. In this thesis, we designed a router which adopted two-dimensional mesh wormhole routing algorithm. By using MyCAD as tools, a router chip designed in logic level. The number of gates turned out to be about 6,000 and its correct operations are also verified by several simulations. We suppose that our design can be implemented by ASIC approach such as FPGA. The result of this thesis can lead to the fabrication of a VLSI wormhole router chip with lower latency, higher operating frequency, higher bandwidth.
