ROUTING AND CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE INTERCONNECT FABRICS

Operating a computer network uses a routing and control protocol, the computer network having an interconnect fabric including routing and control distribution devices and fabric interface devices, each of the routing and control distribution devices and each of the fabric interface devices having a state machine having an input processing unit having parallel input buffers, an output processing unit having parallel output buffers and an arbiter; operating the state machine based on a set of instructions and a table located at the state machine; transferring data from the input processing unit to the output processing unit; choosing a highest priority currently flit occupied parallel input buffer located in the input processing unit for data transmission on a highest priority currently flit occupied channel; and; interrupting the highest currently flit occupied priority channel when one of the parallel input buffers is detected to contain a superseding even higher priority flit.