Adaptive load distribution in mixed-critical Networks-on-Chip

Abstract

Modern Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) must accommodate a diversity of temporal requirements e.g. provide guarantees for real-time senders with the minimum impact on performance sensitive best-effort (BE) traffic. In this work, we propose a protocol-based adaptive load distribution which by selectively detouring BE traffic i.e. load balancing, allows to significantly improve NoC's performance without costly hardware extensions. The introduced method offers, during runtime, safe and efficient integration of mixed-critical workloads through the coupling of the flow control with the path selection based on the global NoC state. The requested real-time reliability of the interconnect is achieved through predictable synchronization with control messages supported by a formal analysis and an experimental evaluation.