Cluster Based Networks-on-Chip

Abstract

Partial Virtual channel Sharing (PVS) architecture has been proposed to enhance the performance of Networks-on-Chip (NoC) based systems. In this paper, the authors present an efficient and reliable Network Interface (NI) assisted routing strategy for NoC using PVS architecture. For this purpose, NoC system is divided into clusters. Each cluster is a group of two nodes comprising Processing Elements (PE), switches, links, etc. Each PE in a cluster can inject data to the network through a router, which is closer to the destination. This helps to reduce the network load by reducing the average hop count of the network. The proposed architecture can recover the PE disconnected from the network due to network level faults by allowing the PE to transmit and receive the packets through the other router in the cluster. 5×6 crossbar is used for the proposed architecture which requires one more 5×1 multiplexer without increasing the critical path delay of the router as compared to the 5×5 crossbar. The proposed router has been simulated for uniform, transpose and negative exponential distribution (NED) traffic patterns. The simulation results show the significant reduction in average packet latency at the expense of negligible area overhead.