Dependent and multimode failures in reliability evaluation of extra-stage shuffle-exchange MINs

Previous reliability evaluations for multistage interconnection networks (MINs) assumed that "all failures are statistically-independent and that no degraded operational modes exist for switches", though these assumptions are not realistic. For example, researchers have described instances of statistically-dependent failures, or fault side-effects, in some MINs. This paper presents efficient algorithms for terminal, broadcast, and K-terminal reliability evaluation of the shuffle-exchange network with an extra stage (SENE), a redundant-path MIN, under assumptions that allow statistical-dependence between failures and degraded operational modes for switches. A modified shock-model incorporates failure statistical-dependency and multiple operational modes into the reliability evaluation. For an N/spl times/N SENE, the reliability algorithms and their run-times are: terminal and broadcast /spl rarr/O(log(N)), and K-terminal/spl rarr/O(|K|/spl middot/log(N)).< >