Energy- and performance-aware mapping for regular NoC architectures

In this paper, we present an algorithm which automatically maps a given set of intellectual property onto a generic regular network-on-chip (NoC) architecture and constructs a deadlock-free deterministic routing function such that the total communication energy is minimized. At the same time, the performance of the resulting communication system is guaranteed to satisfy the specified design constraints through bandwidth reservation. As the main theoretical contribution, we first formulate the problem of energy- and performance-aware mapping in a topological sense, and show how the routing flexibility can be exploited to expand the solution space and improve the solution quality. An efficient branch-and-bound algorithm is then proposed to solve this problem. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is very fast, and significant communication energy savings can be achieved. For instance, for a complex video/audio application, 51.7% communication energy savings have been observed, on average, compared to an ad hoc implementation.