Routing Schemes of an Irregular Mesh-Based NoC

Abstract

Topology selection is an important issue for the design of network on chip systems. At present, typical application-specific NoC systems often integrate a number of heterogeneous components which have varied functions, sizes and communication requirements. Instead of regular topology networks which are not suitable for this sort of NoC systems, irregular mesh network is proposed and applied in NoC systems with irregular structure. The routing algorithm for regular mesh is not guaranteed connected in irregular mesh network. So in this paper, we introduce a deadlock-free routing algorithm for irregular mesh integrating oversized rectangle modules. In spite of the variety of the placements of integrated modules in NoC systems, the proposed routing algorithm is always connected. It means that the algorithm is not dependent on the size and structure of irregular mesh. At the same time, the proposed algorithm only employs few virtual channels.