A study on thermal impacts of routing algorithms for 3D mesh-based network-on-chip

Three-dimensional networks-on-chip (NoC) is proposed to achieve better communication performance, higher device density and lower power consumption. However, thermal issues resulted by stacked high power density architecture are significant challenges for design of 3D NoC architectural systems. In this paper, we explore the thermal impacts of routing algorithms for 3D mesh-based NoC architecture. The thermal impacts of routing algorithms are analyzed, and distinct temperature distributions caused by routing algorithms are discussed. The 3D Odd-Even routing algorithm with random selection scheme is compared with 3D Odd-Even routing algorithm with thermal-aware selection scheme. The experimental results show that 3D Odd-Even routing algorithm with thermal-aware selection scheme achieves higher throughput by 19% under 95°C temperature limits.