Routing Algorithm for Application-Specific Network-on-Chip with Irregular Core Sizes

Routers, physical links and routing algorithms together perform the task of routing a message between different cores on a Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture, they are among the most important parts of its structure because of their huge power consumption compared to other components of a NoC. In order to minimize the power consumed by these components it is essential to design an efficient routing algorithm. In this paper we propose an application specific routing algorithm for mesh based topologies with irregular core sizes. While there are algorithms already present for this purpose the aim of this study is to develop a more efficient algorithm by reducing the length of the path between the two communicating cores. The algorithm proposed in this paper follows wormhole switching and uses XY routing algorithm as a basis and improves on it. In this algorithm routing is performed in two steps, Mapping in X-direction followed by Y-direction. Efficiency of the proposed algorithm has been tested on different mesh networks with varying sizes and also with different locations of oversized cores in the network. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better compared to existing algorithms in the literature.