LEAR -- A Low-Weight and Highly Adaptive Routing Method for Distributing Congestions in On-chip Networks

Congestion-aware routing algorithms can improve network throughput by avoiding packets to be routed through congested areas. In this paper, we propose a minimal/non-minimal routing algorithm to alleviate congestion in the network by making use of all available paths between sources and destinations. The simplicity of the proposed algorithm provides a cost and power efficient solution for Networks-on-Chip while the high degree of adaptive ness, achieved by using an additional virtual channel along the Y dimension, leads to an increased performance. In this method, different restrictions are imposed on the use of each virtual channel, so that the prohibited turns in one virtual channel are permitted in the other one. By fully exploiting of the eligible turns in the network, a large number of output channels can be provided by the proposed method. Based on this method, a packet is routed along the non-minimal path when the neighboring routers in the minimal path are congested.