Providing QoS guarantees in a NoC by virtual channel reservation

Abstract

Virtual channel reservation is a simple approach for providing guaranteed throughput services in a virtual channel network-on-chip. However, its performance is limited by the number of virtual channels per physical channels. In this paper we explore the limits of the approach and investigate how these limits depend on the routing algorithm, the traffic locality, the network topology and the network size. The results show the the approach can be applied in a network of size 10-by-10 nodes with four virtual channels per physical channel. The traffic locality has strong influence on the performance limits of the approach and can also help in reducing the communication energy cost by 50% to 70%. The type of the routing algorithm does not practically influence the performance limits. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.