Multicasting based topology generation and core mapping for a power efficient networks-on-chip

Networks-on-Chip (NoC) is an emerging alternative for system integration that is projected to meet the growing communication demands for future System-on-Chips. Compared to the bus-based systems, traditional NoCs do not have versatile data transfer capabilities like broadcasting. Multi² Router is a Multi Local Port Router (MLPR) architecture that has multicast feature in-built inside the router elements of an MLPR-based NoC. In this research,we present an NoC configuration generation approach exploiting the multicast feature. Compared to the traditional single port based unicast transfers, we observe an average of 50% packet reduction (maximum of 74% using 9 Local Port (LP) router, in benchmark p3), across a set of benchmarks. On an average, when compared to the traditional 1 LP unicast router, there is a 16% reduction in the execution time and 35% reduction (maximum of 67% in benchmark p4) in total power consumption. The results show the promise of the proposed scheme, and thus, help to realize power-efficient Networks-on-Chip.