Design and Evaluation of Low-Latency and Shortest-Path Routing Algorithm for Triplet-Based Hierarchical Interconnection Network

摘要

Routing is one of the key factors that determine how much of the ideal performance of the network-on-chip is realized. A well-designed routing algorithm can extend much benefit through the implementation of this potential. Existing routing algorithms for a triplet-based hierarchical interconnection network (THIN) can be applied for a balanced THIN but are not suitable for a non-balanced THIN. This paper proposes the shortest path routing algorithm for THIN, called SPORT, which can be applied to both the balanced and non-balanced THINs. Based on the THIN features, SPORT computes the shortest path at the source node and constructs the output port list to minimize the computation time at the intermediate node. The simulation results show that SPORT can obtain lower traffic latency than existing routing algorithms. We also compare THIN with the 2D mesh in terms of traffic locality. The simulation results show that THIN is more suitable than the 2D mesh for these high-locality traffic workloads.