Virtual channels planning for networks-on-chip

The virtual channel flow control (VCFC) provides an efficient implementation for on-chip networks. However, allocating the virtual channels (VCs) uniformly results in a waste of area and significant leakage power, especially at nanoscale. To remedy this situation, we propose a novel approach for customizing the virtual channels allocation based on the traffic characteristics of the target application. Towards this end, we first develop an algorithm that calculates the port contention rates and expected bandwidth at each router in the network. Using this information, we add VCs only to the channels with the highest bandwidth usage. Our simulation results involving synthetic and real applications show more than 40% buffer savings compared to uniform VC allocation, while achieving similar performance levels.