Prioritizing semi-static data streams in network-on-chips for runtime reconfigurable systems

This paper presents a concept for online detection and prioritization of semi-static data streams in network-on-chips. Semi-static data streams are characterized by a number of consecutive packets following the same path for a longer period of time. The idea is that for such semi-static data streams routing only needs to be done for the first packet. All consecutive packets will follow the same path and, thus, can be directly transferred without any delay by bypassing the complete router pipeline. Detection of semi-static data streams is done locally by each router and only accounts the intra-router transfers of each router input. This allows local aggregation of several individual data streams with different destination addresses and virtual channel identifiers. If several consecutive routers prioritize the same aggregate, a direct point-to-point connection is set up. Depending on the actual traffic patterns this results in a combination of a packet oriented and a circuit switched network-on-chip.