VCRBCM: A low latency virtual channel router architecture based on blocking controller manger

Abstract

The network on chip has been proposed as a solution for communications between IP cores in System on Chip design. Many types of network on chip using different kinds of buffering strategies has been proposed in the open literature. The virtual channel buffering proposed by Dally allows improving the performance of the network with an overhead area. In this type of network, the blocking of packets can occur and a mechanism to manage these packets is needed. For this purpose a new low latency virtual channel router based on blocking manager module was proposed. The blocking manager is incorporated in the router micro architecture with a distributed fashion. Each physical channel uses a blocking controller module to switch between virtual channels when a blocking problem occurs. The low latency is obtained by placing the routing function in parallel with the link controller to reduce the critical path. To validate our proposal, we present the functional validation of the blocking controller module, a virtual channel router based on the blocking manager, and finally we present the simulation of the network with a scenario that involves the problem of blocking.