A Virtual Channel Allocation Algorithm for NoC

Abstract

Virtual channel (VC) flow control proves to be an alternative way to promote network performance, but uniform VC allocation in the network may be at the cost of chip area and power consumption. We propose a novel VC number allocation algorithm customizing the VCs in network based on the characteristic of the target application. Given the characteristic of target application and total VC number budget, the block probability for each port of nodes in the network can be obtained with an analytical model. Then VCs are added to the port with the highest block probability one by one. The simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm reduces buffer consumption by 14.58%~51.04% under diverse traffic patterns and VC depth, while keeping similar network performance.

Exploration on Routing Configuration of HNoC With Intelligent On-Chip Resource Management

“…Bao et al [15], proposed a new virtual channel allocation algorithm which is based on the characteristics of the target application workload to customize the virtual channel in the network. Given the communication characteristics of the target application load and the budget of the total number of virtual channels in the on-chip network, the virtual channel can be added one by one to the node port with the highest congestion probability by constructing the congestion probability of each node in the virtual model live network.…”

Automated synthesis of custom networks-on-chip for real world applications

“…VCs have become integral to NoCs over the last decade and offer several advantages [6,28]. While efficient, adding more VCs also adds area and power overheads and a careful balance has to be maintained between performance achieved and overheads added through VCs [4,12]. Hence, VC allocation has become a major focus of NoC design and synthesis.…”