Comparing Two Non-Blocking Concurrent Data Switching Schemes for Network-on-Chip

Based on a previously developed Code-Division Multiple-Access (CDMA) Network-on-Chip (NoC) structure, this paper examines the overhead cost of data encoding and decoding operations in the CDMA data switching scheme by comparing it with another non-blocking concurrent data switching scheme, crossbar, in the same six-node on-chip network environment. Different data path configurations are explored in the realizations of the six-node network in order to further examine the characteristics of the CDMA NoC. The crossbar structure is realized by parallel multiplexers. The two different realizations of the six-node network which apply the CDMA scheme and crossbar scheme separately are realized in Register-Transfer Level (RTL) by using Hardware Description Language (HDL). Based on the RTL realizations, area and power costs, data transfer latencies, and the number of data wires of the two schemes is compared.