VCBR: Virtual Channel Balanced Routing in Torus Networks

Deadlock-free virtual channel allocation scheme should be designed to balance resources utilization, particularly for modern communication-centric interconnects networks. Dateline, proposed decades ago, is one of the most popular methods to remove cyclic dependencies within a single dimension of a torus. While the problem of virtual channel misbalance caused by these deadlock avoidance schemes brings lots of performance pathologies. In this paper, we propose a serial virtual channel balanced routing algorithms (VCBR) for torus networks. The technique is deadlock-free, and can promote the virtual channel balance in a wise manner. Moreover, these methods can be used to both wormhole and virtual cut-through switched networks. Extensive simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods as compared to the well-known existing approaches.