An adaptive congestion-aware routing algorithm for mesh network-on-chip platform

In this paper, an adaptive congestion-aware routing algorithm is proposed for mesh network-on-chip (NoC) platforms. Depending on the traffic around the routed node, the proposed routing algorithm provides not only minimum paths but also non-minimum paths for routing packets. Both minimum and non-minimum paths are based on the odd-even turn model to avoid deadlock and livelock problems. The decision of the minimum paths or non-minimum paths depends on the utilities of buffers in neighbor nodes and the specific switching value. In this adaptive algorithm, the congestion conditions and distributed hotspots will be avoided. It has the advantages of getting higher performance and also reducing the latency. From the simulation results, it shows that the adaptive congestion-aware routing algorithm is superior to other algorithms for the mesh NoC platforms.