Deadlock-Free Adaptive Routing in Meshes with Fault-Tolerance Ability Based on Channel Overlapping

A new deadlock-free routing scheme for meshes is proposed based on a new virtual network partitioning scheme, called channel overlapping. Two virtual networks can share some common virtual channels based on the new virtual network partitioning scheme. The deadlock-free adaptive routing method is then extended to deadlock-free adaptive fault-tolerant routing in 3D meshes still with two virtual channels. A few faulty nodes can make a higher dimensional mesh unsafe for fault-tolerant routing methods based on the block fault model, where the whole system (n-dimensional space) forms a fault block. Planar safety information in meshes is proposed to guide fault-tolerant routing and classifies fault-free nodes inside 2D planes. Many nodes globally marked as unsafe in the whole system become locally enabled inside 2D planes. This fault-tolerant deadlock-free adaptive routing algorithm is also extended to the one in an n-dimensional meshes with two virtual channels. Extensive simulation results are presented and compared to previous methods.