FoN: Fault-on-Neighbor aware routing algorithm for Networks-on-Chip

Reliability has become a key issue of Networks-on-Chip (NoC) as the CMOS technology scales down to the nanoscale domain. This paper proposes a Fault-on-Neighbor (FoN) aware deflection routing algorithm for NoC which makes routing decision based on the link status of neighbor switches within 2 hops to avoid fault links and switches. Simulation results demonstrate that in the presence of faults, the saturated throughput of the FoN switch is 13% higher on average than a cost-based deflection switch for 8×8 mesh. The average hop counts can be up to 1.7× less than the cost-based switch. The FoN switch is also synthesized using 65nm TSMC technology and it can work at 500MHz with small area overhead.