Combining sdm-based circuit switching with packet switching in a NoC for real-time applications

In this paper we propose a hybrid network-on-chip "NoC", which combines SDM-based circuit switching and packet switching in order to efficiently and separately handle streaming and best-effort traffics generated by real-time applications. The proposed NoC thus consists of two sub-networks. The SDM technique is used in circuit-switched sub-network in order to increase path diversity, thereby improving throughput and mitigating low resource utilization, while the packet-switched sub-network is kept as simple as possible. In this way QoS is easily guaranteed without having to share resources which often leads to a complex design. The SDM approach takes advantage of the wire abundance resulting from the increasing density of CMOS circuits. Synthesis results on a FPGA and ASIC show that a practical hybrid network-on-chip can then be built using the proposed approach.