A fault-tolerant routing method for 2D-mesh Network-on-Chips based on components of a router

Toward the realization of dependable high-end consumer electronics products, this paper proposes a fault-tolerant routing method for 2D mesh Network-on-Chips (NoCs). Most of the existing routing methods regard the whole node (i.e. pair of a router and a core) as faulty; therefore, depending on the fault distribution, many fault-free nodes may become unusable (i.e. unused node) for proper packet routing. To overcome this problem, the proposed method routes packets based on a new fault model called partial fault model. The basic concept of the proposed method is to treat faults on the components of routers as the failure of routing functions. Simulation result shows that the proposed method reduces the number of unused nodes and improves communication latency up to 60% and 66%, respectively, compared with the exiting methods.