Traffic-based virtual channel activation for low-power NoC

Abstract

Low leakage power with maintained high throughput NoC is achieved. Traffic-based Virtual channel Activation algorithm (TVA) is proposed to activate/deactivate virtual channels in a NoC. The proposed algorithm implements Adaptive Virtual Channel technique of switching-OFF idle virtual channels in the NoC according to traffic heaviness. TVA is an efficient and flexible algorithm which provides set of parameters to be tuned and combined to achieve high performance and high power saving. NoC average leakage power has been reduced by 73.5% with negligible less than 1% degradation in throughput.