Real-time analysis for wormhole NoC: Revisited and revised

Abstract

The network delay upper-bound analysis problem is of fundamental importance to real-time applications in Network-on-Chip (NoC). In the paper, we revisit a state-of-the-art analysis model for real-time communication in wormhole NoC with priority-based preemptive arbitration and show that the model may provide pessimistic or even incorrect network delay upper-bound. We then propose a revised analysis model to correct the flaws in the previous model by further classifying indirect interference as upstream and downstream indirect interferences according to the relative positions of traffic flows and taking buffer influence into consideration. Simulated evaluations show that our model provides tighter and correct network delay upper-bound compared with the state-of-the-art model.