An efficient routing scheme for irregular mesh NoCs

Topological structure is an important part of the design of network on chip systems. The majority of current NoC architectures employ mesh topology, but at some practical application, NoC systems often integrate a number of heterogeneous blocks, or some fabrication faults, reliability issues, may lead to the need of irregular topologies. Consequently, simplistic routing techniques such as XY scheme can not be employed in irregular topologies. This paper presents an efficient specific routing scheme for the irregular mesh network which can be guaranteed for the connection in irregular topologies. This paper applies routing tables (RT) to realize the algorithm and use OVP (Open Virtual Platforms)+ TLM (Transaction Level Modeling)+systemC to create a virtual platform, achieving a 16 x16 irregular mesh topology of heterogeneous systems. Finally the routing scheme is applied to test specific real application network instances, and the result shows its connectivity and efficiency.