DAReS: Deflection Aware Rerouting between Subnetworks in Bufferless On-Chip Networks

Abstract

Network on Chip (NoC) is an effective intercommunication structure used in the design of efficient Tiled Chip Multi Processor (TCMP) systems as they improve system performance manifold. Bufferless NoC has emerged as a popular design choice to address area and energy concerns associated with buffered NoC systems. For low to medium injection rate applications, both bufferless and buffered routers show similar network performance. As the network load rises, network performance of bufferless router based designs deteriorate due to increased deflections. This paper proposes a subnetwork based bufferless design, DAReS, to minimize deflections by redirecting contending flit in one subnetwork to unoccupied productive ports of other subnetwork without incurring any extra cycle delay. From evaluations, we observe that our proposed design approach improves network performance by minimizing deflection rate, power dissipation and shows better throughput in comparison to state-of-the-art bufferless router.