Large scale computing system with multi-lane mesochronous data transfers among computer nodes

1 . A large scale computing system, comprising

a large plurality of computing nodes interconnected in a predefined topology, wherein each computing node is controlled by a corresponding clock signal, and wherein each clock signal has a mesochronous relationship to the clock signals on the other computing nodes;

wherein each computing node is directly connected to a relatively small sized set of other computing nodes under the predefined topology;

wherein each connection between nodes is a multi-lane connection, each lane of the multi-lane communication for carrying a serial stream of data, and each lane mesochronously related to the other lanes.

2 . The system of claim 1 wherein each node includes transmitter logic for sending a signal to connected computing nodes wherein the signal includes embedded data and clock signal.

3 . A method of synchronizing a multiple lane data transfer between a first computing node and a second computing node in a computing system having a large plurality of computing nodes interconnected in a predefined topology, and in which the first computing node is in a first clock domain and the second computing node is in a second clock domain and wherein the first and second clock domains are mesochronously related, the method comprising:

for each data lane between the first and second node, configuring the lane to enable the reception of a serial data stream from the first node and to enable parallel, deserialized transfer to the second clock domain of the second node;

characterizing each data lane relative to the other data lanes between the first and second node to determine relative delay in transmission between the first and second nodes;

equalizing the transmission delays so that each data lane provides data for processing in the second clock domain in substantial synchronism with the other lanes.