Effect of Routing Algorithm on Wireless Network-on-Chip Performance

Abstract

Multiprocessors-system on chips (MPSoC) was primarily based on conventional network-on-chip (NoC) technology. Still, the performance benefit of NoC architecture was constrained by the long-distance of the multi-hop connectivity in NoC resulted in high latency and energy dissipation. Wireless-based NoC was introduced to alleviate these problems. Wireless network-on-chip (WiNoC) uses short-range, radio-hub interconnection with high-bandwidth, which reduces the multi-hop connectivity problem experience in NoC. This work investigates the effect of routing algorithm with a fixed subnet and virtual channel (VC) by varying the packet injection rate (PIR). In WiNoC interconnection, PIR and the routing algorithms are two important factors that can influence the efficiency of WiNoC communications. Based on the experiment, it was observed that WiNoC would saturate at a certain injection packet rate. This paper shows the effects of four routing algorithms (XY, odd-even, west-first, and DyAD) using 8x8 network sizes of WiNoC architecture. They were simulated using Noxim, a systemC-based cycle-accurate simulator, and the simulated results showed that an XY routing protocol has a better network latency and throughput efficiency than others, while DyAD is better in wireless utilization, but all the algorithms have the same energy consumption at different saturation point.