NARCO: Neighbor Aware Turn Model-Based Fault Tolerant Routing for NoCs

Network-on-chip (NoC) communication architectures are increasingly being used today to interconnect cores on-chip multiprocessor (CMP) based embedded systems. Permanent faults in NoCs due to fabrication challenges in sub-65 nm CMOS technologies and due to wearout underscore the need for fault tolerant design. In this letter, we propose a novel low-overhead neighbor aware, turn model based fault tolerant routing scheme (NARCO) for NoCs which combines threshold-based replication in network interfaces, a parameterizable region-based neighbor awareness in routers, and the odd-even and inverted odd-even turn models. The proposed scheme enables better packet arrival rate than state of the art, while enabling a tradeoff between communication reliability and energy overhead.