L. Xin and C.-S. Choy (PRC)
Network on Chip, Router, Asynchronous, Multicast
Network on Chip (NoC) is proposed as an alternative to bus designs, offering a scalable interconnect scheme for SoCs. However network communication does not always have an edge over bus communication particularly in broadcast mode. Therefore, there is a need of an effective multicast scheme in NoC as the system increases in complexity. Like GALS in SoCs, NoC implemented in asynchronous mode is being investigated for its potential advantages in low power, low latency and high throughput. The paper presents an asynchronous NoC router that supports multicast. Innovative multicast protocol and multicast routing algorithm for this router are also discussed. The proposed multicast method is proven to be more effective than other methods. The router can be configured to support multicast in group with ease through setting of some registers. And the extra logic required is very small compared with unicast Quality-of-service (QoS) router, whose function can be realized by this router too.
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