FlexOE: A Congestion-Aware Routing Algorithm for NoCs

Otavio Alcantara de Lima (1) , Virginie Fresse (2) , Frédéric Rousseau (3)

1 lahC
2 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien
3 TIMA - Techniques de l'Informatique et de la Microélectronique pour l'Architecture des systèmes intégrés

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) are currently the most appropriate communication structure for many-core embedded systems. Those networks support many real-time data flows. Their performance depends directly on the routing strategy. In this paper, we present a new congestion-aware routing algorithm (FlexOE) based on a simple and flexible scheme of prioritized sets of rules. These sets of rules are based on the Odd-Even turn model, minimal paths checking, congestion information from adjacent routers and availability of output path. The algorithm FlexOE developed is integrated on a Hermes NoC, and then implemented on an FPGA. The evaluation results point out that FlexOE has greater performances than reference algorithms for some test scenarios and similar performances for others test scenarios.

Keywords: Network on Chip; congestion detection; Hermes NoC; FPGA

Domains: Embedded Systems

Otavio Alcantara de Lima, Virginie Fresse, Frédéric Rousseau. FlexOE: A Congestion-Aware Routing Algorithm for NoCs. IEEE International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping, Oct 2013, Montreal, Canada. 7 p. ⟨ujm-00870338⟩