A congestion-aware routing algorithm for simplified mesh-of-tree architecture in network-on-chip designs

摘要

The network-on-chip (NoC) has been effectively developed for resolving the problem of communication on-chip. Its topology and routing algorithm that have significant impacts on network performance are currently research focuses. Since low power is a critical issue to be focused on, Mesh-of-Tree (MoT) topology is more ideal. But some routers in MoT may carry out heavy communication tasks, which means these routers consume more power and easily become hotspots. In this paper, we proposed a simplified Mesh-of-Tree (SMoT) topology based on MoT in order to weaken this phenomenon and reduce the power consumption. We also proposed a congestion-aware routing algorithm for SMoT, considering both network load and shortest path between cores, making the communication spread to the entire network through adjusting the direction of data forwarding to decrease the network latency. By applying our proposed approach, compared with MoT, experiment result shows the power consumption in network can be reduced by 5.39%-23.3%, the reduction in network latency is 4.23%-27.28%.