If-cube3: An Improved Fault-Tolerant Routing Algorithm to achieve less latency in NoCs

Fault tolerant routing algorithms, are a key concern in on-chip communication. This paper examines fault tolerant communication algorithms for use in network-on-chip (NoC). We propose an improved wormhole-switched routing algorithm in 2-dimensional mesh based on f-cube3 algorithm to decrease message latency. The existing key concept is using numbers of virtual channels (VC) via a physical link. This paper proposes some improvements to make use of VCs while the numbers of them are fixed. We show that when a message is not blocked by fault, all VCs could be used; f-cube3, however, uses only one of the VCs. Furthermore, the strength of the improved algorithm is demonstrated by comparing results of simulations in both f-cube3 and the improved algorithm if-cube3.