Deadlock-free and plane-balanced adaptive routing for 3D networks-on-chip

This paper proposes a new method for designing adaptive routing algorithms for 3D networks-on-chip (NoCs). This method is based on extending the existing 2D turn model adaptive routing to a 3D scenario. A 3-D plane-balanced approach with maximal degree of adaptiveness is achieved by applying a well-defined set of rules for different strata of the 3D NoC. The proposed method is applicable to any of the turn models. In this paper, we employ odd-even turn model as a basis for introducing the proposed strategy. Experimental results show that the new 3D odd-even can achieve up to 23.8% improvement in throughput over conventional odd-even approach. The improvement is consistent for different traffic types. The proposed method enables a new avenue to explore adaptive approaches for future large-scale 3D integration.