Efficient and scalable cross-by-pass-mesh topology for networks-on-chip

Abstract

This study presents an efficient and scalable networks-on-chip (NoC) topology termed as cross-by-pass-mesh (CBP-Mesh). The proposed architecture is derived from the traditional mesh topology by addition of cross-by-pass links in the network. The design and impact of adding cross-by-pass links on the topology is analysed in detail with the help of synthetic, hotspot as well as embedded traffic traces. The advantages of proposed CBP-Mesh as compared with its competitor topologies include reduction in the network diameter, increase in bisection bandwidth, reduction in average numbers of hops, improvement in symmetry and regularity of the network. The synthetic traffic traces and some real embedded system workloads are applied on the proposed CBP-Mesh and its competitor two-dimensional-based NoC topologies. The comparison of analytical results in terms of performance and costs for different network dimensions indicate that the proposed CBP-Mesh offers short latency, high throughput and good scalability at small increase in power and energy.