Deadlock free routing algorithms for irregular mesh topology NoC systems with rectangular regions

The simplicity of regular mesh topology Network on Chip (NoC) architecture leads to reductions in design time and manufacturing cost. A weakness of the regular shaped architecture is its inability to efficiently support cores of different sizes. A proposed way in literature to deal with this is to utilize the region concept, which helps to accommodate cores larger than the tile size in mesh topology NoC architectures. Region concept offers many new opportunities for NoC design, as well as provides new design issues and challenges. One of the most important among these is the design of an efficient deadlock free routing algorithm. Available adaptive routing algorithms developed for regular mesh topology cannot ensure freedom from deadlocks. In this paper, we list and discuss many new design issues which need to be handled for designing NoC systems incorporating cores larger than the tile size. We also present and compare two deadlock free routing algorithms for mesh topology NoC with regions. The idea of the first algorithm is borrowed from the area of fault tolerant networks, where a network topology is rendered irregular due to faults in routers or links, and is adapted for the new context. We compare this with an algorithm designed using a methodology for design of application specific routing algorithms for communication networks. The application specific routing algorithm tries to maximize adaptivity by using static and dynamic communication requirements of the application. Our study shows that the application specific routing algorithm not only provides much higher adaptivity, but also superior performance as compared to the other algorithm in all traffic cases. But this higher performance for the second algorithm comes at a higher area cost for implementing network routers. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.