Channel allocation for low-power NoC design based on Improved Asymmetric Multi-Channel router

The Improved Asymmetric Multi-Channel Structure can effectively reduce the head of line blocking and provide an efficient promotion for the router performance. However, allocating channels in channel groups (CGs) uniformly will cause the buffer wasting and the power significant increasing. To resolve this issue, we present a novel channel planning algorithm which can customize the router design in Network-on-Chip (NoC). More precisely, given the traffic characteristics of the target application and the channel budget, our algorithm automatically assigns the channel number for each CG, in different input ports across each router, to match the traffic pattern, such that the overall power consumption is minimized. Experimental results show that, compared with channel uniform allocation, about 15~27% savings in power consumed by buffer can be achieved by our algorithm, while having the similar performance meanwhile.