Application-aware deadlock-free oblivious routing based on extended turn-model

Abstract

Programmable hardware is gaining popularity as it can keep pace with growing performance demand in tight power budget, design and test cost, and serious reliability concerns of future multiprocessor embedded systems. Compatible with this trend, Network-on-Chip, as a potential bottleneck of future multi-cores, should also support pro-grammability. Here, we address this issue in design and implementation of routing algorithm for two-dimensional mesh. To this end, we allocate paths based on input traffic pattern and in parallel with customizing routing restriction for deadlock freedom. To achieve this, we propose extended turn model (ETM), a novel parametric deadlock-free routing for 2D meshes that generalize prior turn-based routing methods (e.g., odd-even) with great degree of freedoms. This model facilitates design of Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach, which considers channel dependency turns as independent variables and decides for both path allocation and routing restriction. We solve this problem by genetic algorithm and evaluate it using simulation experiments. Results reveal that application-aware ETM-based path allocation outperforms prior turn-based approaches under synthetic and real traffic loads.