A hybrid router combining circuit switching and packet switching with virtual channels for on-chip networks

In this paper, we propose a hybrid router which combines circuit switching and packet switching with virtual channels for on-chip networks in order to efficiently transfer streaming and best-effort traffics in specific applications. Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) technique and clock-gating scheme are used to take the benefits from the flexibility and throughput advantage of packet-switched router and superior power efficiency performance of circuit-switching. Synthesis and simulation results show that the proposed router has a gain of optimization in latency and average power consumption compared to either of the routers with single switching technique, with a slight growth of 6.8% in area overhead, while the virtual channels increase the network bandwidth by 26%.