چکیده (انگلیسی):

The routing algorithm used in a Network-on-Chip (NoC) has a
strong impact on both the functional and non functional indices of the
overall system. Traditionally, routing algorithms have been designed
considering performance and cost as the main objectives. In this study we
focus on two important non functional metrics, namely, power dissipation
and energy consumption. We propose a selection policy that can be coupled
with any multi-path routing function and whose primary goal is reducing
power dissipation. As technology shrinks, the power dissipated by the
network links represents an ever more significant fraction of the total power
budget. Based on this, the proposed selection policy tries to reduce link
power dissipation by selecting the output port of the router which
minimises the switching activity of the output link. A set of experiments
carried out on both synthetic and real traffic scenarios is presented. When
the proposed selection policy is used in conjunction with a data encoding
technique, on average, 31% of energy reduction and 37% of power saving
is observed. An architectural implementation of the selection policy is also
presented and its impact on cost (silicon area) and power dissipation of the
baseline router is discussed.