An Output Selection Strategy for Network-on-Chip Systems (DICA)

What is it about?

A selection strategy is used for selecting the best output channel from the available channels according to the network status. This paper presents a new output selection strategy called DICA (Destination Intensity and Congestion Aware) that uses both local and regional congestion information from adjacent and two hops away neighbours on the path to destination based on the channel and switch information. Also, the proposed output selection strategy uses a new global congestion aware scheme based on destination node called DCA (Destination Congestion Aware) method to distribute traffic more equally over the network.

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Photo by Slejven Djurakovic on Unsplash

Photo by Slejven Djurakovic on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The key contributions of this paper are as follows: 1) Introducing a new parameter called congestion intensity on path (intensity) to estimate the congestion level of a switch: This paper analyses the router congestion to figure out the channel and switch congestions. The proposed output selection strategy uses the number of free slots of an input buffer to estimate the congestion level of an output channel and uses the new parameter called intensity to estimate the congestion level of a switch. 2) Introducing a new destination congestion awareness method called DCA to distribute the packets along the network based on destination node. 3) Improving the use of the local and non-local congestion information: The proposed output selection strategy by using the channel (free slots of input buffers) and switch congestions level (intensity parameter) of adjacent nodes (local) and two hops away nodes (non-local) can make an appropriate congestion control. The proposed strategy also chooses the output channel with the highest path availability to destination node. In fact, the proposed strategy routes packets through the non-congested paths and it can improve the network performance.

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